Legends and Dreams
by PheonRen
Summary: An ancient vampire runs into Eric entirely by accident. She has been hiding for thousands of years, and does not want to be exposed now. She leaves him with no memory of her, but will she be able to resist her memory of him? Eric/OC m/f. Mature.
1. Sheriff Northman

**A/n: **_True Blood and all the characters thereof belong to Charlaine Harris and Alan Ball/HBO. I am grateful that they allow fanfiction at all._

_This story takes place just before the end of season 3, before season 4. Alternate Universe. Will probably contain spoilers. There may be graphic depictions of violence, gore, vampirism, sex, etc. _

_This is a romance between a female OC and Eric Northman._

**Legends and Dreams**

**1. Sheriff Northman**

Rhiannon had been traveling for most of the night. She wasn't making the headway she had hoped to, though, because she needed to feed. The problem was that she was in the middle of nowhere. Even the gas stations had been empty and closed up.

She was getting to the point where she was ready to simply stop at a house—any house—and glamor a human and feed. She didn't prefer the method, but there were times it was her only option. It was starting to look like this was one of those nights.

She opened up her hearing somewhat and listened to the surrounding area. To her surprise, she heard music and the murmur of voices. It must be either a party, or a bar, she decided. If it was a bar, the possibility existed that she could find someone in the parking lot and glamor them. If it was a party, then she would check the scene and leave if she couldn't find someone alone.

Flitting toward the sound, she stopped short of the bar, called Merlotte's Bar and Grill. She searched the surrounding area with her hearing, but no heartbeat or footsteps met her ears. Sighing, she realized she would need to go inside. From Rhiannon's point of view, any interaction with humans was risky, and even more so at a bar.

Taking a deep breath, though, she walked up and pushed the door open. Stepping inside, she was greeted by a pretty blond, who picked up a menu and smiled. She was... perky... Rhiannon decided.

"Welcome to Merlotte's! Right this way, please!" the blond said.

Definitely perky, Rhiannon thought, suppressing a sigh. Interactions with humans were always taxing for her. Excitable humans were especially difficult.

"What'll it be?" she asked as Rhiannon laid the menu down.

"Tru Blood, please. Do not microwave it, if you would be so kind."

"Well... it's been in the fridge. It's pretty cold. We only have A-positive." Her ponytail flounced as she said it.

Everyone in the bar had turned to stare when Rhiannon asked for the Tru Blood. Rhiannon fought the instinct burned into her long ago to avoid crowds.

"A-positive is fine. Thank you. I will take it cold, if you please."

Rhiannon felt that microwaves further killed the already dead substance that was intended to succor vampires. Because it was not living blood, she would have to feed again as soon as most newborns. If she drank living blood, she could go for months.

Ill luck that she was traveling just as the hunger ignited in her again.

And her presence was having its usual effect upon the men in the bar. Even a few of the women were beginning to look at her with a sort of starry-eyed fascination.

She took the drink and smiled at the waitress. "How much?"

She pulled a couple of bills out and laid them on the table after the waitress answered. Then she stood up with the jug of synthetic blood.

"You won't be staying?" the perky blond asked. "I'm Sookie, by the way. I don't think I've seen you around here?"

"No," Rhiannon replied. "I won't be staying. Even if I had time, it seems that my presence is a trifle discomforting to your patrons."

"Oh them? They're just a bunch of dumb rednecks. No manners to speak of. Like puppies. Or assholes." The blond dimpled and Rhiannon wondered what the point was and why the girl seemed to want her to stay so badly.

"No doubt they are truly flattered to learn of the high esteem in which you hold them," Rhiannon told her. "Thank you for your hospitality. I must be on my way."

Rhiannon found making conversation to be as laborious and difficult as always. She considered glamoring the entire bar and fleeing, but that, too, was laborious. She doubted they knew enough to report her presence to the local Sheriff, anyway.

She stepped toward the door, and felt the presence of another vampire. Before she could flit out, the door snapped open. Immediately, she knew that this vampire was old, though nowhere near as old as she.

He stepped inside and began to walk toward the back of the bar. Rhiannon waited, holding her breath. He got only a few steps into the room before he suddenly turned to her, his fangs snapping out. Her heart sank. Of course, it would be her terrible luck to run straight into the oldest Sheriff in America.

"You are in my territory," he said. "You did not report to me."

She kept her fangs in. Even weak and tired and having not fed in days, she could overpower him as easily as if he were a child but she hadn't remained undetected for thousands of years by being a fool.

"No, Sir," she replied, keeping her fangs in and her eyes down. "I stopped to get food. My sincerest apologies. I have not eaten in so long that my hunger overtook my manners. Please forgive me."

"Go to Fangtasia and wait for me there. You may report to me when I return."

"I do not know where it is," she admitted, hesitating.

She did not know, and she did not want to go to his nest. There was far more danger for her there than here. To be noticed by a Sheriff was bad enough—to go to his nest was unthinkable.

Not unexpectedly, he grasped her by the throat. She didn't fight him as he lifted her off of the ground. "You entered my territory without knowing where my Seat was?"

She was in the danger zone now, and Rhiannon knew it. She had learned a couple of thousand years ago that she could glamor vampires much as she did humans. But this one was old. If she managed to do it, it would cost her dearly. She could not then glamor the entire room afterward. She had to do something to get him alone.

"I cannot explain here, Sir," she told him, giving the humans around them a significant glance. It was a gambit to get him outside. She could not explain the truth to him regardless—she hadn't ever intended to report to any Sheriff in any territory she flitted through on her way to Western Canada.

He looked around and then set her down. "Very well." He retracted his fangs. "Go outside and wait for me."

She picked up her Tru Blood and walked out. She drank it, feeling it restore a bit of her strength.

Moments passed while he conducted whatever business inside he had come for. She'd seen him go behind the counter and begin speaking with the cook, so she assumed it couldn't take long.

Soon, he walked out, looking at her steadily. She almost regretted what she was about to do to him. He didn't look or act quite as insane as other vampires. But she could not allow him to remember her.

Her fangs clicked out, and she leaped into the air. His fangs responded, and he met her with a clash of bodies that flipped them end over end in the air.

She slammed him down on the ground, holding him as easily as a human might hold a struggling kitten. Then she locked onto him. "What is your name?"

"Eric," he answered, slowly, mildly. His fangs retracted and he suddenly looked lost and uncertain.

"Eric, you will forget that you ever saw me here. You came here and concluded-"

"Eric?" It was the perky little blond.

Rhiannon looked up, breaking the glamor she'd begun on the blond vampire. "Fuck," she swore. It would be so much harder the second time.

The blond ran across the parking lot and started beating on her.

"Sookie, no!" Eric commanded. "Run!" His fangs snapped back out.

"Be still," Rhiannon snarled at him.

"Sookie," she commanded the blond. "Do not run. Everything will be fine."

"Like hell it will!" Sookie yelled. "What are you doing to Eric?"

Rhiannon was shocked. Her stomach twisted. "You cannot be glamored?"

"No. What are you doing to Eric?"

"Listen to me, Sookie," Rhiannon told her. "I have to make him forget me. That's all I'm doing. I'm not going to hurt him, if you'll just let me finish. I don't want him to ever know I've been here. I don't want any vampires to know about me." Rhiannon wracked her brain, trying to find a solution to the problem this human presented.

She had only killed a humans in nearly eighteen hundred years. She didn't want to do it now.

"No!"

Rhiannon sighed. "Let me help you understand, Sookie. Either I make him forget, and you swear to never speak a word to anyone about me... or I must kill you both. I have no other choice."

"Sookie," Eric said again, "run away! You have no idea how dangerous she is!"

"Vampires can't be glamored," Sookie argued, crossing her arms. "Why should I trust you, anyway?"

Rhiannon laughed. She looked down at Eric and told him, "Vampires are insane. Humans are all going insane. She's as helpless as a wingless fly, and she demands to know why she should trust _me_!" She looked back up at Sookie. "You know you can trust me because you are not yet dead. This vampire is a thousand years old. He is the oldest known vampire in America now that Russel is dead. I can snap him like a toothpick. Do you really think that you are any impediment to me at all?"

But Rhiannon's luck was not holding out. Another vampire arrived. Rhiannon had felt her long before she arrived. She let go of the male with one hand to grasp the newcomer female. The female had silver on her, but Rhiannon hadn't survived that long to let some nearly-newborn get the better of her. She snapped the female vampire's wrist, effectively ending her ability to use the silver chain.

"Drop it," she commanded.

The female refused, despite the broken wrist.

Rhiannon looked into her eyes. "You want to drop the silver."

"Yes," the female responded. She dropped it.

"Pam!" the Sheriff snapped, interrupting and breaking Rhiannon's control.

Resigned, Rhiannon snapped her fangs out. First, she would take care of the female-

"Wait!" Sookie cried. "Wait, you're not going to kill her, are you?"

"I no longer have a choice," Rhiannon told her.

"Sookie! Stay out of this!" Eric barked again.

"It's too late for that," Rhiannon told him.

"What's going on here?" the female vampire that Eric had identified as Pam, demanded.

"I am going to kill you all because this human could not make a deal to keep her mouth shut," Rhiannon informed her.

"It sounds really bad when you put it that way," Sookie objected.

"You think?" Pam said, her voice dripping sarcasm like a honey sandwich on a hot day.

"Wait!" Sookie cried again. "Wait, can't you glamor them one at a time or something?"

"I don't have the energy now. I've already wasted it. Unless you're offering your own blood?"

"No," Sookie said nervously, her hand automatically going to cover her neck. "But I have an idea! It's clear that you don't want to do this."

"Speak quickly," Rhiannon commanded her.

"Well, maybe you can hold onto one of them and send the other one to get someone to feed you. Pam is Eric's Progeny-"

"Sookie!" Eric snarled. "Be silent! You are not improving the situation!"

"Perhaps she is," Rhiannon said thoughtfully. "If I could feed, I could glamor you both." She looked at Sookie, her eyes narrowed, "Why should I trust you, though?"

"Because I don't want to die!" Sookie answered. "Eric is the fastest, strongest thing I know of. If you can kill him so easily, then I know I don't stand a chance."

Rhiannon released Pam, then Eric. They would not try to escape—both knew it was beyond futile, even if she couldn't glamor them. She looked at Pam. "You will go. Procure me someone who is willing and not someone I must glamor. If you return with more silver tricks, I will tear your maker apart right in front of you. If you do not return quickly, I will tear him apart right in front of her." She indicated Sookie.

Pam flitted away after Eric nodded at her to do as she was told. Her look at Rhiannon before she left was pure hatred.

"Sookie," Eric said, "go inside."

"No-"

"Go inside," Rhiannon told her. "I will come back inside and replace the Tru Blood I so carelessly dropped when it is complete." It was false, but a good enough reason to go back inside.

Sookie hesitated, but finally said, "Fine." She gave Eric a dirty look as she passed him, stomping back into the bar.

Rhiannon looked him over. "You protect her. A human. Why?"

"You did not kill her. Or me. Or Pam, who tried to burn you with silver. Why?"

"The AVL-" she began, but he interrupted.

"Yes... the AVL forbids it. You could have killed and hidden us all and none would have been the wiser. You could have fed on her and glamored us both and moved on. But you did none of those things. Why not?"

Rhiannon shrugged. "I don't enjoy killing. I'm old, I just want to be left alone."

"Who are you?"

"Idle curiosity, Mr. Northman? How very human of you."

"How did you come about the ability to glamor vampires?"

Rhiannon sighed. "I told you, Mr. Northman, I am old. It developed for me over time." She raked her hand through her hair. "Sometimes it almost seems worth my while to simply give up and let them catch me. I'm not always certain why I cling to life at all anymore."

He flitted over to stand directly in front of her, looking down at her. She was not afraid, but his proximity made her surprisingly anxious. "My Maker chose to meet the sun. Do you have Progeny?"

"No," she answered honestly. "By the time I knew how to make another vampire, I did not wish to do so."

"What of your Maker?"

"He died immediately after turning me... I do not think he even knew he had made me. I had bitten him in my terror when he first dragged me out of the house. He was still drinking from me when he heard riders coming. He dragged me with him, intending to feed on me at his lair. I killed him, not understanding what had happened." She turned away. "I do not wish to speak of it."

He guessed, though. "You were alone and confused."

"For somewhere around five hundred years, I think. I was wild."

A 'wild' vampire meant one who lost touch with the human self so completely that they lived like an animal. It was rare in the extreme for a wild vampire to survive for more than a few years. She knew of no other one who had survived for hundreds. Almost all were killed by other vampires, because they risked exposure.

Rhiannon answered the question on his face. "A human. He smelled like that one." She pointed at the bar, knowing he would know she meant Sookie. "The one you protect." She gave him a direct, penetrating look. "He stopped me from feeding on his cattle, but he didn't harm me. He gave me a bath, instead. For his efforts, I nearly killed him. It was then that I realized what I was. I was everything I most hated."

To her surprise, the Sheriff reached up and touched her face. "No Maker. No Progeny. You have never been in vampire society. Lonely life."

She looked away. "And long. Your Progeny returns."

Pam flitted up, putting a young man on his feet. "This is Andrew. He volunteered."

Rhiannon looked at Eric. "Glamor him and be sure he came of his own choice."

He did as she commanded, "Andrew, did you want to come here?"

"Yes..." Andrew answered, his voice dreamy, distant.

"Do you know that you will be fed on?"

"I do." Still dreamy, smiling.

Eric broke the contact and looked at Rhiannon. "Satisfactory?"

She stepped up to Andrew. He looked at her with the eagerness and apprehension of a child uncertain if he would be spanked or given a cookie. She looked at him for a long moment, letting him get the sense of her latent vampiric appeal.

After a long moment, he smiled, shy and uncertain. "You're beautiful," he told her. Then he closed his eyes and clenched his fist. "I'm sorry. I meant..."

"Shhhh," she ran a finger up his arm. "It's okay, Andrew." Her fangs clicked out and she nuzzled him, sliding close to him. He hugged her, burying his face in her shoulder; in doing so, bending down and coming within range of her fangs.

His heartbeat was the sweet roll of thunder, and the siren's call rose in her as it always did. Drink. Kill. Consume. He smelled sweet and his body was warm, alive, sensual. Curling a hand through his hair, she held his head still.

Then she plunged her fangs into soft, yielding flesh. Blood gushed into her mouth, a warm flood of sweet elixir. She drank deeply, until she heard the first tell-tale sign of blood loss. His heartbeat began to slow, and she licked his neck to seal it, pulling back by strength of will alone.

Power and life flooded her. Power that should have lasted her for months, but would likely last only a few short days when she was done glamoring the two vampires—maybe less.

"Thank you," she whispered in his ear, and stepped away.

"Give him your blood," she commanded Pam.

"He's already had it," she answered. "I don't think he really needs more."

"Very well." Rhiannon turned to Andrew and drew his attention to her. "You were attacked tonight, Andrew. A young vampire lost control and fed on you." He became distressed, and she soothed him. "It turned out okay, though. Pam felt your distress. She came to rescue you. You are appropriately grateful, but mostly glad it's over."

She turned to Pam. Drawing the vampire's attention, she told her, "You felt Andrew's fear tonight. You decided to investigate, against your better judgment. You found he had been bitten by a young vampire, but the newborn was gone before you got here. You never saw the vampire that bit him." Pam repeated her suggestion in a monotone. Rhiannon finished, "You should take him back to Fangtasia before he finds more trouble for himself and disturbs you again."

"Yes. I should take Andrew to Fangtasia," Pam said.

She picked him up and flitted away.

Rhiannon turned to Eric. "What did you come here for tonight?"

"I can't tell you," he answered.

"I can make you tell me," she told him. It was an observation, not a threat.

"I would prefer you not do that," he answered.

She laid her hand on his cheek, preparing to glamor him.

"You remind me of my Maker," Eric said. "He would have liked you." To her surprise, he leaned forward and touched her lips with his. "I would have liked to know you," he whispered.


	2. Escape from Bon Temps

**A/N:**_ msjackson, I thank you, and I agree with you. Sookie is... not exactly my favorite character, either. :p_

* * *

><p><strong>2. Escape from Bon Temps<strong>

A silken longing curled through her, a mix of lust and loneliness. It was not the kiss that evoked it, not entirely. It was the surprising gentleness, unexpected and poignant. She had encountered countless men and even male vampires. Many through the nearly endless years had attempted to seduce her.

But none had shown her gentleness in the way he just had.

Her ancient, undead heart stirred to life enough to constrict and leave a band of uncertainty around her chest, tightening as she looked into his blue-green eyes.

"That isn't possible," she murmured.

"I understand," he replied. "I don't like it, but I understand."

"Did you conclude your business inside satisfactorily?"

He nodded, not taking his eyes away from hers.

As she began to glamor him, she realized it was harder even than it usually was. Her own internal struggle against the ever-present loneliness seemed suddenly fresh and raw, and part of her fought against glamoring him.

"Eric," she murmured.

He looked vulnerable and lost, uncertain... as they always did when vampires were glamored.

"You came to Merlotte's. You completed your business here. It took a bit longer than you expected, but the outcome was satisfying. You never saw me. You desire to return to Fangtasia and conduct your business as usual."

He repeated her final statement, "I desire to return to Fangtasia." He stepped back and flitted away without a backward glance.

Unsatisfied, regretful, Rhiannon walked back into Merlotte's.

"I'm afraid I dropped my Tru Blood and will require another," she told Sookie.

"Right away," the blond said, without her former perky attitude. She got it and slapped it into Rhiannon's hand. "I want to talk to you. Outside. Now."

Rhiannon felt irritation rise in her. She followed the blond into the parking lot. Once out the door, though, she grabbed her, shoving her against a car. "Listen to me, little girl. I am so old that I don't even remember how old I am. Do not speak to me as if I am your lapdog. Now that the Sheriff and his Progeny have been glamored, you are less than useless to me."

Sookie's hand lifted, and Rhiannon braced herself. A blaze of light flashed, and she held on as it knocked her backward, dragging Sookie with her.

"Don't try your faerie tricks on me. I've encountered your kind and I am far stronger than you'll ever be. I know all of your capabilities, and doubtless your tricks, as well."

The girl drew a breath to scream, and Rhiannon tilted her head. "Do you want someone else to die because you screamed?"

The girl fell silent.

"Listen to me, and listen well. I am letting you go only because you have no credibility. They have forgotten me. If you go to them with tales of an ancient vampire that doesn't kill humans and can glamor vampires, they will never believe you."

Rhiannon felt an onrushing vampiric presence.

"Be silent for their sakes, if not for your own. If they do believe you, I will have to kill you all."

She flew up, narrowing her vision. Sure enough, a different vampire arrived, and the waitress argued with him. Rhiannon doubted, from the vociferousness of their argument, that the blond would tell him. She turned and flew away, but found herself exhausted quickly. She had to go to ground early, she realized.

Between dealing with the vampires and glamoring them, and holding out against a surprisingly powerful blast of faerie magic—much more powerful than Liam's had been—she had little of the energy left from feeding. Back to square one, and nothing to show for it all except a nagging emotional discomfort.

She found a cemetery and buried herself in a fresh, unused grave for the day. It was uncomfortable and she would be dirty and have to wash her clothes before her arrival at the posh hotel in Prince George, British Columbia. The situation was not ideal.

But the next night, she felt somewhat restored by the comforting presence of the Earth, and climbed out quickly. Too quickly...she had not listened for heartbeats first.

A wolf stood snarling at her, his hackles raised. A wolf who smelled more human than wolf, and whose eyes glowed vibrant red. She stared at him, meeting his eyes patiently, but without concern.

"I do not want to kill you, but if you continue this terrible behavior, you shall give me no choice and I will do so."

He snarled one more time, then lowered his head, a sign of unwilling but definite submission. This werewolf was no fool, and she was glad of it.

His form shifted, and he stood in front of her, naked. Something must have been urgent for him to shift in front of a vampire and stand naked in an open cemetery.

"Who are you?" he demanded, growling even in human form. "What are you doing here? When did you last feed?"

She crossed her arms. "You presume to make demands of me, wolf?"

He glared at her. _Bold fellow_, she thought.

"My friend has gone missing. Her trail ends here. Well, right over there, to be more precise."

Rhiannon raised her nose to the air. She listened and smelled, sifting out various currents of scent, some of them from many, many miles away. "Faerie magic," she informed him. "Probably her own."

He stopped growling, staring at her in surprise. "How did you know that?"

"I can smell it," Rhiannon told him.

He sniffed around, looking surprisingly like the wolf he'd just been. "I don't smell anything."

"Of course not, you're just a werewolf."

He was back to the glaring and the growling.

"No offense intended," she supplied, a perfunctory response to his obvious taking of said offense. "I assure you that I did not harm your faerie. I do not kill humans—even half humans—unless they push their luck."

"You don't know Sookie," the werewolf said. "All she does is push her luck."

Rhiannon couldn't help it, she grinned. "Actually, yes, I do know her. And you are not exaggerating. However, that being said, I did not harm her, nor did I know she was here at the cemetery last night. I fed off of a willing fangbanger yesterday."

He was clearly completely unconvinced. Rhiannon sighed internally and flitted to him. The heat of his body was alluring, as was the sound of the thunder of his heartbeat. But she would not feed, would not even ask.

He struggled, and would not meet her eyes. "Wolf," she told him, "I swear to you that I did not harm Sookie. Let me glamor you and move on. You have nothing to fear from me."

He growled and struggled longer, but finally, by accident, his eyes met hers and he was trapped. She relaxed her hold as he went slack. "I did not harm your friend. You will not remember meeting me. You will not remember anything about me."

Releasing him, she used some of her precious reserves of energy to flit away. The display of power had cost her already taxed system. She had to find food, and she had to do it quickly. She was dismayed by the fact that she would be unable to wait for permission or desire this time.

She raged at the situation for a moment, grabbing a tree and rending it in her frustration. A mistake, not only for her peace of mind, but because it further taxed her strength. She sighed and stood still, letting her hearing and her sense of smell range. There, she had it. A man, not too far away.

She followed the scent, until she saw a young man with dark blond hair. He was dirty and obviously unhappy. Her fangs clicked out. She landed in front of him, and he jerked back, surprised.

"Whoa! Hey, you ain't gonna kill me, are ya?"

"No," she said, drawing him into her gaze. "What's your name?"

"My name's Jason." then, just as blankly, "You're pretty."

Rhiannon was uncomfortable. She had long avoided sexual contact with humans, because as a general rule they were—sometimes through no fault of their own—inadequate lovers. But a curling lust rose in her belly, unfurling like a sail on the open seas.

She groaned, something about this man was different. He didn't smell faerie, but the sensations she was getting from him were decidedly a portion of that magic, as if it lay inside him but could not be accessed.

"Jason," she murmured. "I smell vampire blood on you. You have harmed a vampire profoundly. Your very cells scream to me of it."

"I know," he said, and she saw a tear slip from his eye. "I didn't mean to. I liked him, I really did. I brought him Tru Blood."

"You have to pay the piper now, Jason. You have to save a vampire life, for the blood you stole."

"I don't want to die!" he answered, another tear slipping down his cheek.

"Shhh," she comforted him. "You aren't going to die, Jason. You're going to be fine. You'll feel fine. You'll feel forgiven."

She sank her teeth into him and tasted his blood, hot and delicious and sweet. To her surprise, it did not have the slightly tinny taste of the unwilling, but was warm and full-bodied, instead. She drank, stopping early, restored enough that she did not need to drink him down to the early stages of loss. She sealed the wound with a lick, then licked again to heal it entirely.

"You won't even remember this happened, Jason. You will only remember that you are forgiven, and you will care for yourself well for the next few days."

"That wasn't so bad," Jason told her dreamily. "I don't know what I was so scared of."

"You won't remember that, either, Jason. No vampire has ever fed on you." She didn't want him to begin to think that vampires were safe.

"No," he answered. "Never."

She flitted up and away. He had restored her power significantly enough that she would once more be sated for several months, provided she avoided anything that taxed her power as significantly as the last night had.

She spent the next day in another cemetery. Then the next in another. The night after that, she went to the ocean and cleaned herself and her clothes. When they had dried, she found an ATM and withdrew enough cash to pay for the hotel stay.

The Grand Vampzier was a new hotel that catered specifically to vampires. She had little choice but to stay there for the conference she would be attending. Walking down the long hallway, she checked into her room, paid for with cash. The vampire attendant at the desk had asked her nothing, and she'd been relieved. She was worried enough just being there.

But, Rhiannon had a weakness. She enjoyed interior decorating. Which made the fact that she owned no home that much more amusing, really. She had nothing to decorate, but she would spend hours looking at magazines and whenever she got the chance, she would spend just as much time at her various apartments on a computer, creating houses in The Sims 2.

She had even mastered creating her own designs within the various editors available for the game. In fact, she'd had her computer shipped to her so that she could sit down and redesign one of the ancient style castles she'd recently created.

Amusingly enough, she'd actually found a vampire-focused seminar on interior decorating. Unfortunately, it had been halfway across the world, and the trip had been long and more than a bit harrowing, since she couldn't use the conventional means of travel without passports and various other identifying markers. Along with the problem of dying if she happened to even catch a glimpse of a ray of sun.

She plugged the computer in and turned it on, waiting for the unbelievably long startup for the game. When she was in at last, she tried to focus on her guilty pleasure, but not even refurbishing the fantasy castle brought her any measure of distraction from the thoughts that plagued her.

She got up and walked to the window, staring down at the city below.

For more years than she could remember, she had not indulged in sexual behavior. Humans were inadequate simply because they did not have the stamina or strength of a vampire. Being with them, she often felt fearful that she would injure them, and it ruined the experience—even with the few that had enough sense to realize that sex was more than poking his penis into the right hole a few times.

And vampires... well. That was risky at its best. Her age would likely be exposed simply by her superior strength. Most vampires, additionally, enjoy a sort of extreme and rough sex that she could find no pleasure at all in. Further, there was the consideration that having sex tended to make one memorable.

Twice now, though, she had experienced that ancient, dormant longing. She had sublimated it long ago, and believed it mastered.

Yet, that Sheriff. He had displayed a gentleness that she almost hadn't recognized, it had been so long since she'd seen another express it, outside of TV programs, which she rarely watched anyway. It was human culture before, and now it was all plastic, stilted vampire 'culture', more catered towards the humans than vampires, as well.

She touched the cool pane of the window, its sun-blocking hardwood shutters open for the nighttime. It was as cold as she was, and she sighed. Humans were endlessly fascinated with vampires. Some longingly and some morbidly. But ultimately, vampires as a whole were cold, empty things, and Rhiannon was no different.

'My Maker met the sun,' he had said.

She looked up at the black sky above, filled with the glittering dots of distant stars. One gift of TV and computers was that they had given her the gift of remembering what that sky was like when it was broad and blue and empty except for the huge ball of fire that hated her so.

What was it like, she wondered, to stand beneath that son and let it carry you away?

A shiver ran through her. She didn't want to die. She didn't like her empty, meaningless life, but she didn't want to die. The sun was not her friend, and its son of heat and death was not beautiful to her as it was to many other vampires, who craved being able to experience its heat and survive.

The darkness was safe, even if it was... well... dark. And lonely. She wrapped her arms around herself as if chilled.

The phone chimed, a notice that the conference would be underway soon. She dressed from among the clothes she'd had shipped to the hotel under an assumed name, and hurried down to slip in at the back of the room.

A human woman stepped up to the podium with a sleek, ultra-modern smile. She wore modern human clothing, and looked very professional and wealthy.

"Hello, everyone," she began. "Thank you so much for coming." She tittered nervously. "I hadn't realized there was such interest in interior design amongst vampires. I'm flattered, truly."

Rhiannon rolled her eyes. The woman clearly knew nothing about how to talk to vampires. A mutter flowed through the room—others were thinking the same thing; out loud. The wonder of youth, she thought with a slight smile.

The woman cleared her throat. "I'm Michelle Kennidy, and I'll be your hostess for the conference. Thank you all for coming." Her smile had gotten rather strained.

"Ahem. The first grouping that I'd like to show you is the Macintosh Room. This room is red like the apple it's named after. It has splashes of white..." She nattered on about the room on the large screen behind her.

Rhiannon looked through the booklet that showcased more of the designs and realized she'd wasted her money. She got up and picked up her purse and set down the booklet.

"Is everything okay?" Michelle called to her.

Rhiannon's heart sank. Everyone in the room was now looking at her, and although the oldest she could sense in the room was a five hundred year old, she feared someone might have an exceptional talent in recognizing the age of vampires.

"Well, it's a lovely room, for sure. But it's very human and very modern. I'm a vampire, not a human." She would ordinarily have thanked the woman and left, attempting human courtesy, but not in front of a group of vampires. "This is a waste of my money."

"She's right," someone else said from the other section of seating.

Michelle puffed, clearly irritated. "Well, what exactly is wrong with human designs? We've improved the strength of these sets-"

"Why?" Rhiannon asked her.

"Well, for vampires, of course," the woman replied, apparently affronted by the 'stupid' question.

"Let me assure you, Michelle, I do not weigh any more than a human does. And unless you have laced them with titanium or at least steel... perhaps carbon... then you cannot reinforce them enough to survive it should I have a temper tantrum and throw it across the room. Taking human designs and making them stronger so that you can charge vampires more for them does not make you a 'Vampire Designer' as you claimed in your advertisement."

She swept her hand around the room. "Many of us are a hundred or more years old. We don't want modern human furnishings, we want things that evoke memories in us. We want furniture that looks like it came out of last century, but has the amenities that have come with this century."

"Yeah!" shouted several vampires, and several others cheered.

"Good night, and good luck trying to get vampires to pay for 'improvements' to human furniture that are both unnecessary and useless."

Rhiannon walked out of the room, trying not to feel the bite of anxiety. She couldn't remember the last time she had spoken in front of half that many people, much less that many vampires all at once. She headed to the elevator, turning around and nodding when three vampires stepped in with her.

One of them turned to her, putting his arm up on the wall beside her as the doors slid shut and the elevator lurched upward. "I don't think you're from these parts," he drawled.

"It doesn't sound like you're from 'these parts' either," she answered him. "You sound about as Canadian as French Fries and Apple Pie."

He scowled. "I didn't see you report in to the Sheriff." He looked at his two companions. "What about you boys, you see her there?"

"Nah," one of them answered, "I didn't see her. I'd sure have remembered, too."

She'd been a fool to come here. She couldn't glamor three of them at once, not even very young ones like these. They hadn't been at the conference, she realized; they had followed her in from the lobby.

"And which of you is the Sheriff here, then?" she demanded.

"I don't need to be the Sheriff to know you didn't check in with him all night, cause we just come from the Seat," the aggressive leader growled at her.

"You really don't want to do this," she told him. "You're very young, and apparently rather foolish. I suggest you go back to your nest and do not test me."

He grinned at her with a cruel, predatory grin. "I'm not afraid of you. You can't do anything to us. If you kill us, The Authority will kill you." His fangs snapped out. "We just want a little fun. Come on, you like fun, don't you?" He laughed, an ugly sound full of vile connotations.

"Last chance," she told him. "Back off." She gripped him by the neck, extending her arm to lift him off of the ground.

One of the others jumped on her, his fangs coming out. He tried to bite her, but she grabbed him with the other hand. She crushed him against the elevator's side, kicking the third vampire as he tried to join the fray.

With a solid 'thunk', the spine of the third vampire snapped from the kick. She took the first and pulled his head backward until his neck snapped as well. Then she dropped him and turned on the second, who had tried to bite her.

"Biting is very, very bad manners," she told him.

She ripped his throat out with her own fangs, spitting flesh on the ground. He gurgled and twitched. She laughed at him. "You're so young that you still think you need to breathe, and you're going around attacking vampires? Stupid. Very stupid. I hope you've learned your lesson."

The elevator dinged. She straightened her dress jacket and stepped out. A maid stood staring, aghast, at the living, but mangled vampires in the elevator and Rhiannon with her mouth dripping blood and her clothing sprayed with it.

"Sorry about the mess. They made it, let them clean it." She threw a mop at one of them, who glared even as his body twitched, jerking him into place so it could heal properly. She looked back at the terrified human maid. "They'll all live, they're vampires." The woman looked only slightly relieved.

Rhiannon walked to her room and stood leaning back against the door. She trembled inside. The physical violence was much easier for her physically than the glamoring. It took nothing from her as far as corporeal strength. However, the emotional toll was extensive. She had never gotten used to it, and never taken the same egregious pleasure in it that others had taken.

She took a deep breath and packed quickly. She flitted with her packages down the stairs, not using the elevators and doing her best to avoid the maid who'd found them. At the desk, she had the boxes shipped back to her apartment and left. She spent the day in an old, dry well that she found abandoned in a field.


	3. Vampire Etiquette

**3. Vampire Etiquette**

The next night, she headed back towards the port in Miami, Florida; down the length of Idaho and into Utah. She had come up through Louisiana on the way up in order to see New Orleans, a town she'd lived in long ago. Nothing had been the same, so she had decided not to go back through there. Yet, she found herself traveling down instead of straight across the nation...

And not because she had any interest at all in going anywhere near New Orleans, either. The next night as she cut through part of Colorado and across the Oklahoma panhandle, she told herself that she was simply taking the most efficient route.

Of course, she wasn't... Not at all.

A couple of nights later found her levitating outside of Fangtasia, watching patrons go in and out of it. She was in his territory, and she had assaulted his person. Even if he didn't remember it, perhaps she owed it to him to check in on her way through, she rationalized to herself.

And, she could see him again. Just for a few moments. Nothing more.

But Rhiannon was old. She had lived for millennia, and not because she was foolish, rash, or taken to flights of emotion based actions. She wanted to go inside, but the greater part of her argued that it was a poor choice. It was too public.

Since her experience in Prince George, she was even more trepidatious about going inside another public arena.

At last, tired of the constant need to protect herself, she made a decision. Suddenly feeling self-conscious, she stashed her travel pack, and smoothed her pale hair, bound in a french braid that reached her waist. It was so blond it was nearly white, and she felt a tremor of anxiety run through her at the thought of that shining beacon. She'd stopped at a gas station to change, and had applied cosmetics to hide her pale lashes and darken her pale eyebrows.

But she was still pale, and she was all too noticeable in normal circumstances, much less walking into a vampire bar. No doubt it was a dark world, as all vampire nests were prone to being. She had tried to accommodate the typical atmosphere by wearing black slacks, perfectly tailored as all of her clothes were. Above the tailored slacks she wore a flowing dark purple shirt that dipped into her decolletage, the only concession she made to the fact that she was going in there for a reason beyond what she was admitting to herself.

She calmed herself and walked toward the door, her custom moccasins making no sound as she approached. The heavy-set vampire at the door stopped her.

"Name?" he demanded, obviously bored.

"Caoimhe Alpin," she responded. She pronounced it the proper way, so that it sounded like 'k'eye-vu al-pin'.

"State your business," he answered, a perfunctory response.

"I am checking in, simply passing through."

He stepped aside, his attention already passed on to the human behind her. She walked into the bar, the red and black interior almost making her laugh with its predictability and its stereotypical ambiance.

She stopped just inside and looked around. She saw Eric sitting on the dais, looking bored and indifferent. Pam stood behind him. Rhiannon had never given up the habit of breathing, because it made her look more human to humans. So she took a deep breath and stepped toward the stage that doubled as the Sheriff's dais.

A shiver ran down her spine as she asked the vampire guard at the foot of the stage to petition for her approach. She hoped she had guessed the protocol correctly. She had not approached a Sheriff for hundreds of years to announce herself. St. Croix in the Virgin Islands was not considered a vampire territory, and thus had no proper Sheriff. In the rare case that something went wrong, a Sheriff from one of the surrounding territories would come in. Rhiannon always avoided them.

Eric's eyes met hers as the vampire guard whispered in his ear. Rhiannon did not bother to listen in, though she could have easily done so. The guard stepped back, and Eric gestured with two fingers. "You may approach," he said smoothly.

Deeply worried about the proper protocols, and knowing that they changed as the world did, Rhiannon stepped forward, resting one foot on the stage, and bowed, resting a forearm on the raised leg. "Sir," she greeted him, waiting for the customary touch on the head that would allow her to raise her head again.

Pam laughed. "My, my, my; you are a relic, aren't you!"

Eric's hand touched her head, and she looked up, embarrassed.

Holding her eyes, he spoke to Pam, "Shut up, Pam. Not even the humans in this Area are half so courteous, much less the vampires." He waved at the empty seat beside him. "Sit down."

She hesitated. Everyone in the bar was staring openly at them. She felt a growing need to escape, but he was her venus fly trap and she was in the grip of an allure too strong to resist. She sat beside him as he looked out over the bar. Pam huffed and walked away.

"Why have you come to Area 5?" he asked.

"I'm passing through, Sir. I will be out of Louisiana before daybreak."

"Stay," he told her. "There is an extra coffin in the office."

She almost objected. His eyebrow rose. She could not refuse a Sheriff in a bar full of vampires and humans. Although they had returned to their relative conversations, she knew there was an undercurrent of awareness in the room.

"As you wish," she replied.

"Allow me to extend you some refreshment," he told her. He signaled, and one of the young fangbanger men at the bar stood up.

"Thank you, I have recently fed," she responded. "I am well sated."

"Perhaps you prefer women?" he inquired, again lifting that eyebrow.

She smiled slightly. "I do not. I am being honest, I have fed recently and am fully sated."

He leaned toward her. "I cannot imagine what that must be like. I don't believe I've ever felt sated."

Rhiannon felt apprehension and even the beginning of trepidation shimmer in her belly, a remembered feeling from long ago. She had made a mistake. It had taken several thousands of years before the hunger had abated from continual to occasional.

"Perhaps you need new humans," she answered, snapping her fangs out and making a nearby human jump and stare at her. She gave him a slow, calculated smile and he looked away quickly.

"Come with me," Eric commanded.

She was really getting tired of being bossed around. She said nothing, though, and rose, watching him unfold from the chair he was sitting in like an accordion pulled past its limit.

He walked out and unlocked a sleek black sportscar. "I gave Lafayette the red one," he told her.

She didn't know what that meant, but it struck her rather as bragging in some way that she couldn't define. "I'll keep that in mind." It was her go-to phrase when she didn't understand social moments.

She slid into the seat beside him, hoping that her bag would be okay on top of the building she'd left it on. It seemed unlikely anyone would reach it there. She wondered what his game was, as well. Where was he taking her and why the interest in her.

The engine purred and they left the parking lot. He drove for some time before pulling into the parking garage of an exclusive apartment complex. He flitted around the car and was helping her out before she'd finished opening the door.

He led her into an apartment that was layered in reds and blacks like his bar. She looked around. "Does Pam do your decorating? You really need to fire her, if she does."

"No, I hired a human. She works at night and specializes in vampire décor."

"Looks to me like she specializes in human vampire lore."

He grinned at her, a cheeky, roguish grin. "They do expect certain things from us, don't they."

"Yes." She ran her hand down a particularly garish piece of faux paneling. "Some of their expectations are earned... but this whole red and black fetish they have..." She turned to him. "I don't see them decorating their own homes in hamburger brown and mustard yellow. Maybe with some french fry wallpaper."

He was covering his mouth now, and Rhiannon stopped to ponder if he had ejected his fangs unintentionally for some reason.

"Hamburgers? Mustard? French fries?" he finally blurted.

"Well, they color our houses red because apparently we don't just like to eat our food, but we must like to live in it, too." She shrugged. "Never made much sense to me. Although red can be a nice decorating color, it seems to be one of the only two they can offer to vampires."

She fell silent then, having exhausted her entire supply of small talk.

"I thought you might stay the day here. I'll be staying at Fangtasia."

"I had actually hoped to make some more distance tonight before going to ground." She didn't know or understand why he was holding her to begin with.

"Who are you? There's no Caoimhe Alpin. I am not saying I know every vampire, but I know the names of the eldest, at least."

"But do you know the youngest?" Her heart sank. Could he tell her age?

His next words partially confirmed her fear, "I do not know how old you are, but I am certain that you're older than I am." He walked around her, lifting her braid and running his hand down its nearly white length.

She sighed. She would have to glamor him again, but find some way that wouldn't make her time at Fangtasia suspicious.

"I know I can't stop you if you want to go. I am appreciative that you were so patient with me at my Seat. I am hoping that you will stay because you wish to."

Surprised, she met his eyes and watched him curiously. "Why?"

"You remind me of my Maker," he told her. "And beyond that, you intrigue me." He touched her cheek with his finger. "You're a porcelain doll come to life. You look more like an angel than a vampire. Your fangs look out of place when you show them."

"You're exaggerating," she told him. "Have you been taking flirting lessons from humans?"

He grasped her jaw gently, turning her face up to his, a bold move for a vampire that recognized her as being older and more powerful than him. "That does not amuse me. You are extremely distinctive. I would have heard of you, even if you were young, which you are not."

She looked at him. "What do you plan to do about it?"

"Nothing. You have remained hidden so long because you wish to, that much is clear to me. I do confess to wondering why." The pressure of his hand altered and he ran his fingertips down her jaw and then along her neck.

"You are bold for such a young vampire," she told him. "It's as if you do not know the danger you are in."

He stepped closer to her. "Am I in danger?"

"I cannot afford to let you go. If I am reported to The Authority, I will be hunted as a rogue."

"Not all of us are slaves to The Authority. I obey only as it benefits me to do so."

"And insofar as it does not inconvenience to you to keep my secret, you will do so? But if you are threatened by the secret, then what?"

"Did you just say 'insofar'?"

"Serious question, Mr. Northman."

"I know about you now. I guess you have to kill me or take the risk of trusting me." His face was serious and he was far too close. If she'd had a pulse, it would have been racing with conflicting feelings.

"I have other choices available to me, Mr. Northman."

"I can't see that you have," he told her. "It seems like a pretty straight-forward situation to me."

"That is because you do not have all the information necessary to see all of the alternatives."

He spread his arms wide. "Enlighten me."

"No."

"I am taking a risk here, too, you know. I'm allowing an unregistered, unknown vampire free run of my Area."

"Or you are stalling me until The Authority arrives. Even I would be tested were they to send a swarm of humans and vampires after me."

"I did not do so the moment I saw you. From that moment, I would be suspect to their way of thinking. If I didn't immediately turn you in, then I committed treason against my King and against The Authority. Among others."

She walked to the coffee table. On it sat a chess set, in red and black, no less. She reached down and picked up the red king. His fangs dripped black blood down his chin and chest and he looked as if he were about to take flight and capture the other king.

She had been alone so long. It was not getting any easier.

At the same time, she had learned long ago that vampires were never to be trusted. She had trusted once, in the desert of Arabia. The day had been long and hot and she was starving when she dug her way out of the burning sand into the chilly night. She'd heard heartbeats and gone in search of them.

When she arrived, she found a group of nomadic peoples, and had tried to get one alone. It was before she had learned how to stop herself, and she had found one and drank him dead. Another vampire had caught her at it.

He had invited her to his tent. He had used much the same logic... he knew about her now, so there was no sense in not going with him. She could be part of his nest and he would protect her. Lonely, afraid, still confused after years of being Wild, she had gone with him.

For the next sixteen years, she had been sold as a whore every night. Her exotic coloring made her the highest in demand, and she had been controlled by silver chains so that she could not harm her 'patrons'.

It was true that such a thing could not be done to her now without a far more extreme level of guile and a significant number of both vampires and humans—or weres. But still the prospect did not escape consideration. He could send a human into the room with silver during the day. He could use guile himself and harm her.

She looked up at him as he walked up to her.

"Hideous, aren't they?"

She met his eyes, ignoring the question. She wanted so badly to stay and get to know him that she was going to waste much of her energy to get an answer. Though she knew that if she failed, he would consider it an attack and all bets would be off.

"Eric..." she caught and held his gaze. His face slackened and went blank. "Have you contacted The Authority about me?"

"No," he answered.

"Do you have plans to do so?"

"No!" sweet, almost boyish denial.

"Why have you brought me here?"

"I am curious about you. You are beautiful. You make me think of my Maker. I like that. I thought you would be comfortable and that might make you stay longer." The sentences came out in a disjointed stream-of-thought jumble.

"You will forget this conversation." She released him and he looked puzzled for a moment.

Holding up the chess piece, she drew his attention back to it. "Quite hideous, indeed. I already have plans to make a chess king. Eating a burger. Or a steak, perhaps. Given their predilection for food based decorating, I'm sure it would be a huge hit with the humans."

Then, setting the piece down, "I will stay for today. I will make no promise to stay the night tomorrow, however."

He grinned, a lopsided, sexy, rather triumphant grin. "I can be persuasive when I want to."

She chuckled, genuinely amused and enchanted by his boyish nature. "So I see."

"You haven't yet," he said, wagging his finger at her, "but you will." He flitted to the door and looked back at her, still wearing that sexy grin. "See you after sunset." The door closed softly behind him.


	4. Day Break

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><p><strong>4. Day Break<strong>

She opened the window, flew to her pack, and returned with it. She would need something else to wear the next night, after all. She walked around his apartment, looking it over. It really was hideous. Not only was it all only black, silver, and red—with little enough of the silver to almost not count—but the furniture was uncomfortable, as well. It was no wonder he spent so little time there.

At last, she felt the niggling call of dawn and went into the bedroom to lie down. Here, it was even worse. That which passed for a 'bed' was disturbingly hard and flat, with no decorative or comfort elements at all. She shook her head and went to sleep on the sofa for the day. It wasn't so much that it mattered while she was asleep, as much as it mattered when she woke or laid down.

Granted, many vampires didn't seem to care, but she liked to wake up feeling at least somewhat comfortable. Preferably very comfortable. Wanting to leap instantly out of the bed or coffin was a sign that it was uncomfortable. She barely wanted to even be in this apartment, much less wake up to it.

But it smelled of him, so she stayed and let the scent wash over her as the deathly sleep of day whispered over her senses and claimed her.

A few hours later, she was awakened by the shrieks and screams of a human. She sat up, staring in surprise at the horrified woman who stared back. The maid screamed again, dropped her Pledge, and ran out the door.

Disgusted, Rhiannon walked over and shut the door behind her, wincing at the pain of being up in the daytime. She locked it again and laid back down, noting that a human had a key to the apartment and finding it to be a disagreeable situation.

She laid back down, letting the sleep come quickly, before the bleeds did.

She had no idea how long passed before the door slammed open again and she leaped from the sofa.

"Get your hands up! I'm not kidding, lady—er, vampire! I'll shoot. These are wooden bullets!" The officer's hand trembled.

"I am here by the invitation of the owner of this apartment. You will leave now."

"You got any proof?"

"Why don't you call him, and drag him from his coffin in the middle of the day to ask," she recommended, tilting her head and snapping her fangs out. "I'm sure he would be grateful."

The cop behind the first walked into the room, also holding a gun. He was older, and she knew he would be the greater danger, despite his laid-back demeanor. He leveled his gun at her calmly. "We have silver, lady."

"And what are you going to do? Chain me in silver and drag me through the sun to a squad car?" she asked patiently.

He blinked slightly. He had obviously not thought of how to get her safely to his well-lit jail.

"You'll have to stay here until dark." He flicked the gun at the sofa. "Sit down."

Rhiannon felt a trickle of blood run down from her ear. She was irritated—it would ruin one of her favorite shirts, and bloody her hair. Gauging the situation, she flitted into the kitchen and grabbed the decorative pot holder off of the wall. She divested the more dangerous officer of his silver quickly, then moved to the second, who fired his gun randomly. The wooden slug plowed through her shoulder and into a far wall.

Soon, she had all of their silver, as well as both guns. At the other end of the room, she dropped it all and looked at them.

"Arresting a vampire in the daytime is an attack upon her person and is punishable by law as attempted murder. If you do not wish me to press charges, you will leave and return after sundown for your silver and your wooden bullets."

They moved to the door, and she said, "And leave the key."

The older cop dropped the key on the coffee table, giving her a sour, angry look.

"Ta ta, now. See you at dusk." She gave them a false, bloody smile. Her own blood was running freely down her face now.

They left and she walked painfully over to shut the door.

She sank to the floor where she was and collapsed. The sleep took her immediately, for the energy expenditure of flitting in the daytime had sped the progress of the bleeds to the point where she was lying in a pool of blood by the time she collapsed to the floor.

When Eric came in that evening, she woke as he pushed on the door, knocking her out of the way. She crab walked backward as he stepped in.

"What happened?" he demanded immediately.

"You forgot to inform your maid that I was here. She called the police, who decided that mid-day was the appropriate time for a vampire arrest." She wiped blood away, only managing to smear what wasn't crusty.

She sighed.

"I'm sorry. I will have a word with them," he told her.

"I took the key. I was not willing to stay in a place to which a human has the key."

"Again, I apologize. There's no excuse for such incompetence on the part of the police, and the maid is naturally fired."

She wanted to point out that it wasn't the maid's fault, but decided it was meaningless to quibble about it. Vampires were not always reasonable—even relatively sane ones. No more than humans were.

She stood slowly as he reached out to give her a hand. "I must shower and feed," she told him.

He nodded. She went into the bathroom, another hideous invention of red and black, and showered quickly, forced to release the braid to completely remove the caked blood. When she was done, she got out and dried, changing into a pair of tailored jeans and a gold shirt with black piping and embroidery in the form of a phoenix on the chest and back.

She went into the living room to brush her hair so that she could sit down.

"So," he said, standing in the entrance to the small dining room and holding a Tru Blood—which she noticed he did not drink. "I was thinking about the whole decorating thing. Maybe you could stay a while longer and redo the apartment and Fangtasia."

"Well, first, you shouldn't change Fangtasia, Mr. Northman. It's a fangbanger bar, and as such, you are best off catering to the human lore. You are trying to attract them, and part of what attracts them is their belief that we are dark, evil creatures that want to live constantly in blood. Changing that would be bad for business."

She started braiding her hair again. "As far as staying here, I'm sorry to say, Mr. Northman, but your Area is just a little too exciting for me. Between the trip through the first time, and my return trip, I have had more trouble than I have had in the last hundred years. I have been assaulted by a faerie, threatened by a werewolf, shot, threatened with silver, awakened during day sleep, and been forced to feed on a nearly daily basis. To top all of that off, sir, the entire area reeks of Maenad and although I cannot sense her, I do not wish to meet her."

He was staring at her with a look of suspicion. "What faerie?"

"The one in that little bar in Bon Temps. She took it upon herself to take umbrage with me. When I threatened her, she tried faerie tricks on me. Do not worry, she was fully alive and arguing with a dark-haired vampire when I left her. I do not eat from unwilling humans."

The suspicion burned on his face, though.

"The werewolf threatened me because he thought I had taken her. I do know she is missing, but I assure you, I had nothing at all to do with it. The place where she went missing from according to the wolf, was awash in faerie magic. Wherever she went, she went there by her own powers, not mine."

He glared at her for a few minutes longer. She desperately wanted to glamor him to believe her, but she didn't have the energy to spare.

A knock sounded on the door. There was the murmur of voices, and Eric snapped and snarled for a few minutes, then the elder officer came in. "My apologies, ma'am," he told her. "I'll just be taking our guns and stuff now."

She swept her hand towards the pile and went back to braiding.

She knew he wasn't sorry at all, he simply wanted to avoid the legal trouble that would come from assaulting a vampire during daylight hours. It mattered little to her, though, as they were humans and their ignorance was simply the way humans were. Impetuous, unthinking.

"So, will you do it?" Eric asked after the officer made good his escape. "Will you redesign my apartment?"

"I don't-"

He took her hand and pulled her to a standing position, inches away from him.

"The faerie is gone. The maenad is dead. The werewolves won't bother you again. I'll hire a maid that comes at night, and no human will have a key so there will be no more police or day wakenings."

"You think I had something to do with the disappearance of your faerie."

"She wasn't my faerie, she was Bill's faerie. And I doubt you did. If you had, you wouldn't have brought her up."

"I miss the simple, uncomplicated life I have in St. Croix, Eric." And part of her really did. "It seems to me that your area attracts danger. A sort of reverse lighthouse."

"Are you really going to leave me to live in the midst of vampire hamburgers and mustard?"

She laughed. "You're trying very hard for charming, aren't you?"

"Is it working?"

"I'm hungry," she told him.

He smirked.

She shook her head with a smile. "I'll go find my own food if you prefer not to take me to your fangbanger bar."

"I'll happily take you to Fangtasia," he told her. He picked her up and flitted out the window.

She chuckled as he flew her there. "I can fly myself, you know."

"No, I didn't. But it's more fun together, don't you think?"

"Maybe," she allowed.

They walked toward the entrance to the bar, and Eric leaned forward. "You liked it," he murmured in her ear.

He jumped ahead of her to open the door so she could go inside, and she stepped past him and into the cool interior of the bar. She studiously ignored the direct, heated look he gave her.

She ignored it also as people turned to stare. She listened to the sounds of the bar and the underlying lyrical beat of human hearts. Hunger snarled through her, reminding her of the terrible price of flitting during the daytime hours.

She saw Andrew and her fangs snapped out of their own accord.

"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Eric told her, his voice amused but his face completely serious.

"That should be simple. I doubt I could think of anything you couldn't."

"Hey, I am a very well mannered vampire," Eric objected.

Uncertain what had come over her, she said, "Pity," with a sly grin as she snapped her fangs back in and went to do the work of flirting with breakfast.

The poor human was staring at her, open-mouthed. She'd chosen him because she knew he was willing from their first encounter. She was uncertain if she was pleased he hadn't given up vampires despite being 'attacked' by one a few nights past.

She looked at the bartender. "Whatever he's having, he'll have another."

She paid and picked the drink up for him, leading him to a side table.

"I'm surprised to find you alone here," she flattered him. "One would expect to be standing in line for a human as attractive as you are."

He smiled and ducked his head. "I'm actually kind of a nerd," he told her nervously. "I've only had a few vampires drink from me, and they didn't... uh." He swallowed compulsively. "We didn't do anything else."

She was a little surprised, actually. He was attractive for a human, with red-blond hair and a strong, sculpted face. He clearly took good care of himself—the drink was lemonade, not hard—and he was corded with muscles. He was shorter and stockier than Eric, but she had the passing thought that he would have made a handsome vampire, if he'd been darker and looked less friendly.

"Is that why you are attracted to vampires? Because of what else you think we do when we feed?"

He looked surprised. "No!" he objected. "Actually, it's because I saw one when I was a kid. He saved me. So I kind of feel like I owe my life to vampires." He shifted uncomfortably. "It was him," he told her, and pointed at Eric. "So I come here just in case I can find a way to pay him back. But I've always been afraid to say anything."

"That's a long time to hold onto such loyalty," she told him. "It was probably a very simple thing to him, done in passing."

"I know. But it mattered to me. So here I am. I'm not very good at being a fangbanger, but..." he shrugged.

"Would you like to go for a walk?" she asked him. "It's a bit... red... in here."

He chuckled. "You noticed?"

"I'm afraid I have," she admitted wryly. He was an easy human to like.

They walked out, and Rhiannon pretended that the stares around her did not exist, though Andrew seemed to be hyper aware of them.

Once outside, she led him down the sidewalk for a simple stroll. Once out of the view of the door to Fangtasia, she asked him, "Have you ever flown with a vampire?"

"What? No. I thought that was myth."

"It is, for most. But not for all of us." She wrapped her arms around him in a hug. Then she lifted him easily into the sky as if he was a feather—he was little more than that even in her weakened state. She flew with him to a hotel whose lights she saw blinking in the night. It wasn't high end, but it wasn't a dive, either. A Hotel28, modern and middle class.

She walked in and purchased a room, ignoring the smirk of the clerk at first. When she had bought the room, he said, "We don't allow no prostitution, though, you know." He was young and stupid, clearly... no excuse for rudeness.

He leaped back when her fangs clicked out. "Not to worry. Nothing so immoral will be going on in that room."

"We don't allow no blood drinkin' neither!"

"You do tonight."

She walked out and smiled at Andrew. When he blinked at her, she apologized, "Oh, sorry. Fangs." She clicked them back in. "He thought I was a hooker."

Poor Andrew's eyes almost bugged out of his head.

When they went to the room, she smiled at him. "You don't do this a lot, do you?"

"Never," he said, jumping out of his skin when a door banged down the line of rooms.

She walked up to him and turned his face to hers. Their eyes locked and she gently gave him a mental push. "Relax, Andrew. Everything will be okay."

"Everything's okay," he parroted blankly.

She clicked her fangs out and told him, "Put your head on my shoulder." He was too tall, and she didn't want to levitate again—the flight there had taxed her, but she'd wanted to give him something real and memorable.

He did and she drank until his heartbeat slowed. With an effort, she pulled away, the sweet blood still hot on her tongue. She sealed his wounds, but did not heal them. It was a mark, and one he would need later for credibility.

"Take your clothes off, and get into the bed," she told him after capturing his attention again.

He did so, lying naked under the covers. She laid down beside him, still dressed. He rolled onto his side to look at her.

"So what now?"

She caught him again, laying her hand on his cheek. "Now, when I tell you to, you will go to sleep. When you go to sleep, you will have an erotic dream. It will be perfectly detailed and beautiful—everything that you could possibly want in a night spent alone with me. You will sleep through the night, awaken in the morning, and remember the dream as if it were complete reality. You will always believe it to have been a real event. Now, go to sleep, Andrew."

His eyelids fluttered as he fought the command. But her will overcame his and he slept.

She smiled and got up. Kissing him on the cheek, she got some money out of her wallet. She left him two hundred dollars and a note: _Take a taxi back to your car. Use the rest for the fee if you oversleep. Keep what you don't use._

Then she left the key card for the door with it and left. To preserve his fantasy as well as his reputation should he tell people what he thought had happened—and he almost surely would—she did not go back to Fangtasia to be seen during the time she was supposedly having sex with him.

She returned to Eric's flat, wishing that the confounded man had a computer or even so much as a laptop. But there wasn't even a place for it, besides a monolithic black desk that sat covered in dust in the second bedroom that was apparently supposed to be an office. There were no electrical outlets in the room. _More like a mausoleum than an office,_ she thought.

The front door banged open an hour later as she was trying to find something to watch on his dusty big screen TV. Rhiannon was rather glad the maid was fired—she wasn't just a screaming fool, she was lazy and incompetent, too.

Eric walked in, his hand running through his hair and his fangs out. He saw her and, to her surprise, hissed, baring his fangs in fury. He leaped at her and her own fangs snapped out. He hit her with a good deal of force, shattering the sofa and the coffee table. She flipped him over, sending him rolling into a garish red china cabinet with black dishes in it.

He came at her again, and she caught him this time, slamming him down on the ground and grasping him by the neck, straddling him and holding him to the ground with ease. He jerked and tugged at her arm, hissing.

She bared her own fangs and roared at him. When he blinked in surprise, she snapped, "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"You didn't come back after leaving with that human," he growled.

"Of course I didn't, I was feeding," she chastised him.

"Feeding and what else?" his eyes blazed.

She eased up, nonplussed. "Are you jealous? Of a human?"

"No," he scowled. "I was worried about him, he is under my jurisdiction."

She grinned, unconvinced. "You're jealous. What exactly did you think you were you going to do when you found me?"

"This," he growled, startling her as he rolled over and kissed her.

To her mingled pleasure and dismay, she was in a remarkably lewd position with her legs wrapped around his waist as she lay beneath him. Her belly turned to molten lava, boiling and burning with an overwhelming lust, seeking release.

She had the physical strength to correct the situation, but not the emotional strength to do so. She let him kiss her, then found that she was kissing him back with a passion equal to his.


	5. Renovation

**5. Renovation**

Her fangs had clicked away the moment he kissed her, but it was a struggle to prevent them from reemergence. Powerful, ancient feelings were moving through her with the force of the tides.

"Kay-view," he said, mispronouncing her assumed name.

Lost in the fugue of sexual lust and emotional turmoil, she corrected him absently, "Rhiannon."

He stilled instantly and lifted his head. "Rhiannon?"

Trying desperately to cover her error, she said, "I liked the name, so I use it most often."

He raised an eyebrow. "You don't know the legends of Rhiannon?"

"I avoid vampire culture, remember? You can tell me about her later."

She reached for him again and he obliged her by kissing her deeply. He moved against her, and even with their clothes on, she felt a near-desperate need blaze a path through her. She was insane to do this. It was madness to lust, madness to let herself be drawn into sex with this man.

The critic in her mind was forgotten as he rubbed the length of himself against her again, mimicking an action she desperately wished he were doing naked and inside of her. A groan tore from her lips and she arched toward him.

He shoved her shirt over her head and his hand found her breast unerringly. He toyed with it, circling and tugging gently at her nipple. Her body responded with instincts that no amount of time could destroy.

Slightly crazed, she tugged at his shirt, and was rewarded by him simply tearing it off. His body gleamed in the pale, flickering light of the TV that stood muted and active in the background. Muscles flexed and bunched as he moved against her again, and her head dropped back when her view of his magnificent body was obscured by his head dropping to suckle at breasts that had not known the touch of any man for a thousand years or more.

She had forgotten what exquisite torment it could be.

He pulled her pants off, discarding them on the broken sofa without a second thought. He slid down her body, ripping her panties off and discarding the remains as casually as he had the pants. Using his enhanced speed, he brought her near an orgasmic peak almost immediately. But he did not let her slide over the edge. Instead, he pulled back, touching her and caressing her body until the urgency subsided.

Then he brought her near the edge again, only to deny her the passage beyond.

For several hours, he continued the dance, teasing her and bringing her close repeatedly before stopping her and drawing her to a frustrated peak of longing.

At last, as morning drew near, as he was moving inside her, he kissed her again and his fangs clicked out as he buried his face against her neck. She felt him release inside of her and the knowledge created a profound, purely feminine sense of thrill in her.

Her own orgasm was powerful, making her body convulse. She clung to him, gasping as she rode the waves of orgasm one after the other.

"Ow," he said unexpectedly as he lay braced on his elbows above her.

She realized that her legs had tightened around him with what was certainly bruising intensity. She relaxed them guiltily.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you," she said.

He smirked at her with masculine arrogance. "I take it as a compliment. Although it did hurt."

She sighed. "I said I was sorry!"

He laughed, a light, low laugh. "Poor Andrew doesn't know what he missed. Rib cracking sex is always the best."

She raised an eyebrow at him, amused and charmed by his smugness. Then, simply for the sake of facetiousness, she told him, "I don't believe your ribs go that low, sir."

"Details, details."

"The devil is in the details..."

He carefully got up, pulling her to her feet, then picking her up. He carried her with ease into the bedroom. "Will you stay here today?"

She chuckled. "You didn't leave me much choice, did you?"

He grinned. "There are some advantages to fucking until dawn."

"Crass, Eric. Very crass." But she was grinning as she said it.

"I think you liked it," he answered, sliding onto the bed and pulling her against him, face buried in her neck.

"I liked it," she agreed softly, without amusement. "Rather a lot." Then she looked up and caught sight of his face. "Don't be smug, Mr. Northman."

"Me, smug? I would not dream of it."

The sleep crept up on them then, though, and she made no retort.

The next evening as they woke, Eric's phone beeped. He laid still and covered his eyes. "It begins already."

Rhiannon grinned. "It's rough being the head honcho, huh?"

"I'll be right back," he told her with a grimace.

She didn't listen to the words as he spoke on the phone, only listening to the sound of his voice. For an undead man, he had a warm, living voice.

"I'm needed," he told her. "But before I go, I have a favor to ask of you."

"Have you, now?" she asked. "I am dying to hear it."

"I was quite serious about asking you to redesign my apartment. Would you do it?"

She hesitated. The prospect was exciting, but the longer she stayed in any one place, the greater the chance of discovery. Someone was likely to get the idea at some point that she was not a new vampire as she pretended.

Yet, it was time with him. She could, if she was careful and didn't expend too much of her strength, remain out of the public eye for a good amount of time. The furor over her appearance would die and she could simply move on afterward.

"Okay," she answered. "But I will not accept 'advice' from the fool that did this to you in the first place."

He shook his head. "You're the boss. Whatever you want done, will be done. Consult me for anything over five hundred thousand, though, please."

He kissed her on the forehead and flitted out.

Rhiannon got up and paced, pondering the situation. Finally, she came to a decision and picked up the land line. A phone book, or a computer would have helped... what a world when you needed a computer to buy a computer!

Finally, just when she was reaching a point of frustration, she found a computer store that was open after dark. She flitted there as quickly as she could. Purchasing a laptop and a sat phone with hookups for wifi, she returned to Eric's apartment.

She was soon on the phone with various dealers around the world. Not long after that, she was on the phone with various local workshops and construction companies, leaving detailed information on their answering machines.

When they heard what she wanted and looked up the numbers, they called her the next night. Not a single one ignored her call. Within a week, the kitchen was gutted. The floor was redone with marble tiles, the ceiling and walls were redone in wallpaper and paint. New cabinets and appliances arrived and were installed. Rather than the 'drop in' cabinets, these all looked as if they were free standing, though they were anchored to the walls.

The refrigerator and stove were ultra modern, but they were created to look ultra old. Three days after the kitchen was gutted, it was complete. It was done in blue and cream, with reds and greens to accent it. The wallpaper was ornate and bold, the floor shiny and sleek.

Rhiannon was content. It looked like a Victorian kitchen brought forward in time and plopped into the apartment.

Next to be redone was the bedroom, though Rhiannon pushed hard for it to be finished quickly. An antique refurbished Victorian bed was brought, the half-canopy's crown molded of gold and embroidered silk. Embroidered cream silk curtains fell from it to give the head of the bed a romantic, soft look. The mattress was also comfortable and plush. It was covered in silk sheets and an ornate silken comforter in cream and gold.

The floor was removed and redone in cream marble, with a cream, gold, and red rug under the bed to soften and define the bed and sleeping area. The lower half of the walls were cream, the upper half were bold cream, green, and red wallpaper. The ceiling was also done in ornate scrollwork of cream and gold, with red and green accents. Throw pillows and Victorian era plush chairs sitting beside a table rounded the room out.

A cream colored etagere stood in the corner. For that, she had bought a significant number of Victorian era items and delicate glass display cases. Soon the etagere's shelves were once more performing their function of holding 'knick knacks' and sundry items for display. A vanity in the opposite corner held more antique items, completing the room's opulent atmosphere.

"Whoa!" Eric said the night she let him see it for the first time. He turned to her, "It's like stepping back into history."

"For all of their faults, the British did have a real flair for comfort and design," Rhiannon told him. "Brutal bunch of bastards—but they didn't have bad taste."

Eric chuckled. "You do a lot of unnecessary stuff, though. Do I really need such a cushy bed? Or a stove?"

She shrugged. "I guess not. But it's nice to be surrounded by a feeling of comfort. You may not notice it during the day sleep, but you notice when you wake."

"It's truly beautiful. It definitely brings back a lot of history and memories for me, also. I did want to tell you, though... I noticed that you haven't touched the credit card I gave you." He ran a hand down her cheek.

"I know. I don't need it. This is something that I wish to do for you myself."

"I don't need it. I can afford this many times over."

"I do not need it, either. I can afford this many times over, as well. In fact, this is as nothing to the holdings I have."

"And yet you travel by foot?"

She chuckled at him. "You work at a bar and own an apartment that looks like it was decorated by a five year old."

"Touche," he acknowledged.

"I actually live in a tiny little hut, too."

"But you dream of living in a castle. I have a feeling I know how it would be decorated," he smirked at her.

"I see enough black and red. Red's a lovely color and excellent for decorating with—unless you do everything with it. Some other colors are easy to appreciate. You'd think they'd know we get sick and tired of black all the time." She stretched on the bed, looking at him with clear invitation. "We should try the bed out. It's got to be better than your broken sofa or the floor in the office."

He obliged her without hesitation, many times over the next week as she completed the transition of the living room from modern 'vampire lore' to ancient Victorian parlor and dining room, complete with a faux fireplace, over which hung the big screen TV as if it were a work of art.

She had the office rewired and a new desk came. Its green marble top sat upon an antique mahogany desk, heavy and huge, yet comforting and accommodating. She hired an artist from France to come in and paint a garden scene around the walls of the office, as if it were open to the outdoors.

She was standing in the office looking at the scene, lit by the glittering crystal chandelier, when Eric's arms closed around her. "You've finished."

"Yes."

"Will you stay? I know Shreveport's not exactly the mecca of Western civilization, but we do okay."

Her heart ached. "I can't, Eric. I've stayed too long already. Too many workers have seen me and spent time with me. I... I cannot be sure I glamored them all."

"What? You glamor the workers?"

"Yes. I change my appearance in their minds, and encourage them to forget any personal details they might have noticed about me."

"What... really? You can glamor groups of people?"

"There are other vampires who can, Eric."

"Pam can. But only a few at a time, not several, and not a crowd."

"I can glamor small crowds. But only to a herd mentality, not to something as subtle as forgetting my appearance or anything. I can rile them up, make them angry or make them disburse. Nothing particularly fine or delicate."

He shook his head. "You almost make me look forward to getting old. And you definitely are better than my last decorator. She told me not to live in the past."

She looked up at him over her shoulder. "And you listened? That does not sound like you."

"I listened. And I could not stand it. That's why I was never here."

Rhiannon changed the subject. "Perhaps you would come to St. Croix to visit me."

"You're really leaving so soon?" he sounded sad, almost like a child losing a puppy. Rhiannon's heart climbed down into her moccasins and tried to die there.

"Eric. I must. Every night here has been beautiful. Every night here has increased the risk exponentially. I fed tonight from one of the workers who expressed his interest in me. I am sated and that is the best time for me to travel-"

"Stay another week. Just a week," he asked.

"I-"

A heavy knock sounded at the door. Eric sighed. "Hold that thought," he murmured.

He opened the door. A dark haired vampire in a suit stood outside, with men behind him. A blond female vampire in a red dress stood beside him.

"May we come in?" the woman asked. She didn't wait for an answer, but stepped inside. The men with their guns entered as well, spreading out around the room.

"I am Bill Compton, King of Louisiana," the male vampire introduced himself. He pointed at the woman, "This is Nan Flanagan." He pulled a DVD in a case out of his pocket. "There's something we'd like to show you." He walked over and plugged it into the DVD player.

A moment later, the TV lit up as Rhiannon considered the possibilities and weighed her alternatives. She was virtually ringed by men with silver coated guns, no doubt with wooden plugs for bullets. She decided to remain calm and wait and see what would happen.

The DVD started up, and her heart sank. It was surveillance footage of her in the elevator. Faster than the camera could follow, she took out the three smug thugs.

"The vampire in this footage is old," the female vampire, Nan, said. "Very old." She stared pointedly at Rhiannon.

"I did nothing wrong," Rhiannon stated. "They live. They began the assault."

"No, you did nothing wrong in this video. But the fact that you are old enough and powerful enough to be able to do it, means that you are a rogue." She pointed at the men around them. "These guns are loaded with wood, and plated with silver. Please don't do anything stupid."

Rhiannon could take them all down in a heartbeat.

"If you do," Nan stated, "then we will kill Eric."


	6. Trial and Error

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><p><strong>6. Trial and Error<strong>

"To further insure your cooperation, we have his Progeny at a secure location. If you do attack any of us, she will meet the True Death." Nan signaled and one of the men snapped silver cuffs on Eric.

Rhiannon raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think that I care?"

"Ordinarily, nothing. I would reasonably assume that you did not, except..." Nan waved her hands around the refurbished apartment. "Such a gift is extravagant, even for vampires. Does he know how much some of these things cost you?"

Rhiannon laughed. "Do you know how much money I have? I have more money than god. It flows through my fingers like water."

Nan looked uncertain for a moment.

Rhiannon grinned. "You have miscalculated."

But Nan rallied. "Fine then. Kill us and watch as his connection to his Progeny is severed because you would not cooperate." She measured Rhiannon. "You know, your reputation precedes you, if you are who The Authority thinks you are."

Rhiannon snapped her fangs out. "Clearly, it does not, and they do not. If they had any idea, they would not be making this very, very foolish mistake. Especially not right after I have fed."

Nan shrugged. "You're risking Eric's Progeny, and Eric, if you resist."

"I will not accept silver, but I will accompany you. I am curious as to what The Authority thinks they are going to do this time."

"Who are you?" the King asked.

Rhiannon raked him with a dismissive gaze and turned to Nan. "You did not tell him?"

She shrugged. "He follows orders like they all do. He doesn't need to know, he just needs to nod and look pretty."

Rhiannon chuckled. "I would be wary. He's a very young vampire, but so high in the hierarchy already."

"He's there because I put him there. He stays there, because I let him stay there. He obeys, or he dies," Nan snapped, her eyes glittering with arrogant impatience.

Rhiannon walked past her. "You are not The Authority, Miss Flanagan. I recommend that you remember that."

Rhiannon walked to the car and got in. She knew by the fact that Nan had not objected to her refusal of silver that the woman did have an idea of who Rhiannon was. Rhiannon decided to wait and see. She was well fed and content to find out what The Authority would offer this time. Perhaps their bargaining skills had improved since the last time. Hers certainly had. She smiled. They were in for a rough night if they truly thought they had the upper hand.

They arrived at a mansion, well lit and modernized from an older building. Rhiannon recognized that this could only be the King's Seat. It would surely have a dungeon.

It wasn't long before she was shown the accuracy of her prediction. She was shown into a cell that she could feel was surrounded by silver. A moment later, she heard Eric's cuffs removed and he was shoved into a cell in another area. His voice was low as he spoke with Pam.

Rhiannon's mind took in every detail—distance, direction... everything.

Bill stopped outside of her door. "Please let me know if there is anything you require."

She looked him over. "You really have no idea what you've been brought into here, have you."

"I know you are dangerous, and old," he told her. "But little more than that."

He turned to leave but looked back. "Are you?"

She raised an eyebrow, though she knew what was coming.

"Are you the Rhiannon of the legends?"

She clicked her fangs out and gave him a predatory, sly smile. "Would you believe me if I told you that I was?"

"Yes, I think I might," he responded.

She chuckled. Smart, this one. But cagey. "Better for you, perhaps, that I not tell you, then. For according to the legends, few have learned of her and lived to tell of it."

"I do not think you will kill me," he answered. "You did not kill those who attacked you. You did not kill us all at Eric's apartment. I do not think you like killing."

She sobered. "Do not presume that will stop me, Mr. Compton. It has not in the past, and it will not now."

"Rome?" he asked, taking several steps back.

"The reports about Rome are sadly incorrect, Mr. Compton. There were not fifty-seven vampires in that nest. There were sixty-four. And of the unreported vampires, the youngest was seventeen hundred years old. The eldest was almost three thousand. I snapped both of them like kindling. I was old even then. They do not tell you that part, because they do not want anyone to know that there is someone to whom they are as newborn kittens, mewling in fear."

He shook his head. "That's not possible. That was over two thousand years ago."

She cocked her head to the side. "They provoked me, Mr. Compton. They thought to ensnare, judge, and destroy me. They had archers and silver... the only one who survived was the one taken captive with me. And he, only because I was not certain if he was friend or foe." She lowered her head to look at him through the wisps of her hair that dangled over her face. "But of those that I knew to be foes, every single one died. Choose wisely, Mr. Compton, for you have just learned your fate."

She reached out and grasped the silver door and shut it in his face, sealing herself in the cell with rubber coated silver walls. Then she turned her attention inward, ignoring his footsteps as they led away. She considered the distance to Eric and Pam. She considered the amount of power reserves she had.

Then she went into a meditative state to preserve and increase that power. She was going to need it the next night. Morning was too close to act this night.

She firmly tamped down the inner critic that tried to scream recriminations at her. She knew that inner voice was right. She had broken her rule not to linger, and now Eric and his Progeny were paying the price. It was her only fear.

She spent the day in meditation, not sleep. Because she was in meditation, rather than giving her the bleeds, the day gave her increased power. There was a heavy price in physical pain, though. Her nerves fought her, but she persevered, drawing the ambient solar energy and uniting it with her unwilling corpse.

The sun was a limitless source of power. It was a power that was at complete odds with the very nature of a vampire's dead body. To master it took everything she had, and had she faced direct sunlight, not even a state of meditation could have saved her. But because she was drawing upon only the merest trace of its power, she was able to force it to her will with supreme effort.

Evening came, and she looked up at the camera. "Not going to let me out?" she asked.

"You will be summoned for your trial in a few hours," Bill's voice echoed through the connection.

"So very rude to keep your elders waiting," she replied.

Then she summoned all of her energy and went the only direction not protected by silver—down. With a single blow, she shattered the concrete floor, and immediately burrowed into the hard, wet ground beneath. She burrowed swiftly, negligent of the power expenditure it required. It was not only an escape, but it was a raw display of part of her capability.

It was something that no other vampire alive could do so quickly. Many could barely have accomplished digging deeply enough to go to ground, much less to tunnel to another area and break through the ground into the hallway outside of Eric and Pam's cell.

She burst up into the air, immediately grasping the human guard and draining him until he lost consciousness. Two more guards rushed into the corridor and she grasped one and used him as a shield to trap the other while she drained him.

She then drained the last, sealing his wound and dropping his unconscious body to the floor. This, too, was something that other, even older vampires could not do. They could kill multiple humans, but not drain them consecutively as she had just done. She could have consumed another two, had they been available. She didn't think she'd need the power, though. Freedom was at hand.

But she was to be disappointed. She walked over to let Eric and Pam out and realized that their captors had, at least to some degree, anticipated her. Eric and Pam sat in silver cages inside the cell. Opposite them sat another vampire wearing gloves and a body suit. He was also covered in silver, holding a silver-plated gun pointing at Eric and Pam, who were chained inside their cages with silver manacles on legs, arms, and necks.

"Well, I had thought The Authority slightly crazy to suggest we take such precautions," Nan said from behind her. "But apparently, they really do suspect you might be the Rhiannon of the legends." She turned. "Now that you're here, you just as well come with me to your trial." She flicked her hand at the vampire inside the cell. "Bring them. They will be witnesses. And of course, their trial will come after hers, for aiding and abetting her."

Rhiannon offered no resistance as she followed Nan. Eric and Pam would not survive if she did. They were still encased behind protective silver, including the vampire who threatened them.

"Foolish oversight with the floors," Nan said to Bill.

"Of course. It will be fixed immediately," he replied.

They walked up and into a large room, clearly once a living room or perhaps a salon in the days of the ancient building's heyday. A massive screen clicked on at the other end of the room, and the darkened silhouettes of four men and one woman could be seen, their features indistinct and shrouded.

"Why is she not shackled?" one of the men demanded.

"Why don't you come do it?" Nan challenged him

"Do not be impertinent," the man snapped, and she subsided.

"Do you admit that you are Rhiannon Alpin?" another asked Rhiannon.

"I do not deny it," Rhiannon answered.

Mutters rose from the few vampires in the room.

"You are to stand trial tonight for your many crimes against vampires," he continued, his dark, stocky form leaning toward her as if eager to see her found guilty.

"We will begin with the incident in Rome," he said, lifting a piece of paper.

"Wouldn't it be more appropriate to start from the beginning?" she asked. "It seems a shame to start the circus so near the end, doesn't it?"

"What beginning?"

"I killed my Maker on the night he turned me, as he was rising from the ground in which he buried me for later consumption. Is it not a grievous offense to kill your Maker?"

"You admit to this crime?" he asked.

"Certainly. He wanted to kill me, I killed him instead. He wasn't very strong with half of his body stuck in the ground, I'm afraid. Should have waited until he got out to start gnawing on me." She shrugged. "And during the time that I was Wild, I killed any number of vampires who heard rumors of me and tried to kill me. Sometimes I killed them in numbers. It wasn't hard. I used the same snares on them that I used on animals, just made them with silver. The sun did the rest. I was Wild for some five hundred years or so, and I lost track of how many tried to kill me."

"Yes, well. That is why we wish to begin with the incident in Rome," he told her. "It is by far the most grievous attack upon-"

"Oh please. I've done worse. It's only because it was part of the first incarnation of your little power-hungry vampire mob boss wannabe group here that you're so focused on it. Really, they should have left me alone. But they thought it would increase their reputation if they could find me, prove I was real, and execute me." She crossed her arms. "You should have left me alone, as well, you know."

A low growl issued from the massive monitor. "Are you threatening us, Rhiannon?"

"I'm offering you a little free advice, actually. Let me and the others go. If you do not, you will regret it, I assure you. Not a threat, just a fact."

"We do not believe that you are the Rhiannon of the legends," the woman told her. "We think you have assumed her identity in hopes of seeming more intimidating."

Rhiannon grinned. "Then why the farce of a trial against someone who isn't even the one who did it?"

"The trial of Rhiannon Alpin will benefit us greatly. Whether you are really her or not is immaterial. The belief that she has been captured and killed will improve our reputation and display our power to the vampire world."

She chuckled. "So let us begin your farce with Rome, my most famous moment."

"You are charged with the killing of fifty-seven vampires-"

"Sixty-four."

"I'm sorry? What did you say?"

"I said sixty-four. It was sixty-four vampires. And of the unreported ones, five of your 'Authority' were there in person to watch me be raped and staked."

The microphone was muted and the group conferred.

"Your claims are unsubstantiated lies," one of them announced when the microphone came back on.

Rhiannon just laughed. "What's wrong, you don't want it known that I destroyed a three thousand year old vampire with my bare hands, two thousand years ago?"

"There are no vampires of that age in the world," the woman said, her voice as stiff as her posture.

"Really? How can you be certain? How old are the rumors of Rhiannon? What's the first claimed sighting of her?" She spread her hands. "Can you deny that the first legends of me predate known history?"

"Those are legends, not facts," one of the men stated. "It seems clear that you are not going to give us any facts."

She shrugged. "The only facts you have are a video of me being assaulted, defending myself, and leaving my attackers alive. The only thing it proves is that I am an Undocumented. The penalty for that is a month in the coffin."

"So you deny that you are Rhiannon?"

That time she laughed with genuine mirth. "You must make up your minds. Either I am Rhiannon, and must be tried for crimes that predate known history, or I am not Rhiannon and am thus simply an undocumented vampire who must spend a month in the coffin. Choose one and run with it."

"You have already admitted to the killings in Rome," one of them stated, smugness in his voice.

"Have I? The only thing I have admitted to is that I killed several members of The Authority that night. Will you admit that they were there, or will you maintain the lie that there were but fifty-seven vampires there that night?"

Silence blanketed the room, punctuated by the beating of human hearts and their nervous shifting.

One of the dark figures reached forward and muted the microphones again. They conferred. Minutes ticked by. The humans grew more and more restless.

The microphones were opened.

"We have reached a decision. You will be tried for the deaths of the fifty-seven. You will be tried for remaining undocumented for the duration since."

"The question you have to ask yourselves, though, is whether I will sit still and allow myself to be tried for those crimes, or any others. If you admit that I am that old, then you recognize that my age is far greater than any other vampire alive."

"We have your weakness in a cage," one of them replied. His voice was smug, arrogant. "We know you will not jeopardize him or his Progeny. You have the reputation of killing anyone who stands in your way, but you also have a reputation for protecting some individuals to your own detriment."


	7. Acquiring Andrew

**6. Acquiring Andrew**

Rhiannon steadied herself, and reached deep for the power of will that she had generated from refreshing herself with the human guards. The next few moments would be crucial, and would require extreme endurance and tremendous reserves of power.

"You know," she said, applying the power to her voice, "the Book of War states that one should know his enemy. He should be prepared to fire upon her at any instant. He should keep her in his sights, and end her life the instant she moves. And because your enemy is a vampire, you must fire the instant she moves, else she flits to you and destroys you before you can stop her."

Rhiannon cocked her head, sweeping the room with a gaze. "The enemy is known. The enemy is certain."

"Yes, we get the idea," one of the vampires at the other end of the screen drawled.

Rhiannon continued as if he hadn't spoken, "Your enemy is dangerous. She is brutal. She threatens your families. She threatens your life. She threatens your livelihood. She will steal from you if you let her move. She will rape your children and eat your wives."

"Oh, shut up," Nan said.

Rhiannon chuckled. "Your enemy wishes to silence me so that you cannot recognize her. She does not want to be known. But I will tell you. You can trust me because I expose your true enemy, who will destroy your family, your country, your very life."

She pointed triumphantly at Nan. "Your enemy is Nan Flanagan!"

Tracer lights blossomed like tiny red pansies over Nan's heart as every human in the room switched allegiance instantly, as well as several vampires.

Before she could move, before she could speak or signal, Rhiannon leaped to the balcony above where the vampire held a gun trained on Eric. She ignored the silver on him that screamed along her nerves and burned her flesh. Fangs out, she sucked his blood from him, draining him in seconds as he fought to save his own life.

He exploded into a slop of blood and gore. She felt his evil course through her, his blood only adding to her power. Momentarily crippled with pain from the silver burns, she shook her arms as if to shake some of the blood off of herself. The stench of charred flesh bit at her delicate senses.

"Who's next?" With blood running down her face still, and the carnage of their predecessor at her feet, none of the other vampires present was willing to face her down. All but Nan and Bill flitted from the room.

"Ah, how capricious life is!" she told Nan. "How quickly the winds of fortune change!"

She took a cell phone from one of the guards and dialed it.

"Hello?" came a voice from the other end.

"Seize the assets immediately. Wipe the records of this phone." She clicked it shut. Then, for added measure, she crushed it to powder and bits of wire.

She opened the cage to let Eric and Pam out, forcing herself to touch the silver to display her power—false as it might be. Long, long ago she had learned that the appearance of power became the reality of power. For Eric's sake, she had to display powers bordering on the impossible. Any weakness before The Authority would leave him vulnerable.

She did not acknowledge Eric yet, though her heart ached to continue the silence toward him.

As she released Pam, pandemonium broke over the other end of the monitor.

"What have you done?" one of them demanded, his voice filled with fear and rage.

"I have left you penniless and had all of your Progeny or Makers impounded," she replied. "You see, you made a grave error in your approach to life in general. You think that, because you are vampires and you are powerful, you have utter control. You have ignored the jockeying of the humans for power amongst themselves.

"But the inventions you use—the computer you are speaking over now, the chairs in which you sit—are mostly all invented by and controlled by humans. And while you have cultivated ultimate power over vampires and seen humans as useless insects... I... Well. Suffice it to say that I have consolidated my power amongst humans.

"And now, your money and your families—what pass for families for most of you—are in my care and under my control. Had you not threatened Eric, you would have lived the rest of your lives in ignorant bliss. You would have never known that I wield the power of life and death over your families. Nor would you have known to whom your money actually belonged.

"You should have worked a little harder to appreciate the power that humans have over you, by the fact that they effectively control your wealth and because they are daywalkers. I have had spies in every one of your households for thousands of years. You had managed not to make me use them." She smiled, a rapacious, cruel smile. "Until now."

"You'll pay for this," the woman's voice snarled as she broke and ran from the room. The others ran as well a moment later.

Rhiannon flitted over and clicked off the computer attached to the monitor. She turned to Nan. Grasping her by the chin, Rhiannon's fangs snapped out again as she locked onto the younger vampire's will and easily overcame it. "Your life is tied to Eric and Pam's lives," she told the glamored vampire.

"My life... tied.. Eric and Pam..."

"If you do not protect them with everything you have at your disposal, your life is forfeit."

"Protect them... yes. I will."

Rhiannon stepped back. "Nan Flanagan is no longer your enemy," she said. The humans slowly lowered their guns, looking at each other in surprise and confusion. "Leave now." They turned to go and she released their wills.

Fangs still out, head down, she looked at Eric as Nan walked from the room in an apparent daze.

"Holy fuck," Pam said.

But Eric's face was a study in shock and betrayal. "Did you just glamor Nan?" he asked, his voice soft and filled with disbelief.

"Yes," Rhiannon told him, just as quietly.

"Have you done it to me?"

She'd known the question was coming as soon as she glamored Nan. But it still drove a stake into her ancient, decayed heart. "Not since I have loved you," she whispered.

She looked away from the hurt in his face and felt blood trickle from her eyes in fresh rivulets. Her fangs slunk away like chastised dogs.

"You are a broken thing, not capable of love," he snarled at her. He flitted away, and Rhiannon stood in the room with only Pam and Bill.

"Me? Have you done it to me? Can you teach me how to do it?" Pam demanded.

"Survive for another four or five thousand years, and get back to me on it," Rhiannon told her.

"Fuck," Pam was obviously unhappy with the answer. She followed Eric out of the building.

Rhiannon turned her head to Bill. She left the rage she felt showing clearly on her face. "Your faerie will be back. If you harm Eric again, I will rip her limb from limb and devour her in front of you."

"I do not believe you would do that."

"Would you destroy Eric to protect Sookie?"

"Without hesitation."

"Then you know my answer to whether I would kill Sookie to protect Eric."

She left through the roof, leaving a gaping hole in his mansion. She flew until she was hovering outside of Fangtasia. She listened and could tell from the relaxed atmosphere that Eric was not there. She listened closer, until she recognized the heartbeat she was there to find.

Still clothed in blood, dust, and debris, she went inside. She located her quarry quickly and walked up to him.

"Come with me," she told Andrew, sniffing to be certain that his drink was the customary lemonade. She didn't have the patience to deal with a drunk.

"Oh, sure. Of course," he put his drink down and followed her.

She flew him up on top of a far building so that they could look down on the city. "It's pretty up here at night," he finally said. "But I'm kinda scared of heights."

She chuckled and apologized. Picking him up, she took him to the park instead, where she alighted on a bridge that overlooked a miniature waterfall.

"You wanna talk about it?" he finally ventured.

She sighed. "I have come to ask you a favor," she began at last. "But it is no small favor, and it's not really on my personal behalf." She turned to face him. "It will be an opportunity to repay Eric and complete your debt to him."

"I'm in, then," he answered. "No questions asked."

She shook her head. "It's not that simple." She grasped his chin gently but firmly. "This is a very, very serious thing I'm about to ask of you. I have asked it of others, but they have always had months of training and mental and physical preparation. Some of them have gone insane for the year it lasts, anyway. Yet I am asking you to do it with no preparation whatsoever, no genuine understanding of the request, and little forewarning."

Guilt gnawed at her, and bloody tears streaked her face again.

"Well, I gotta make my job-"

"Will a million dollars allow you to drop your job and focus entirely upon what I ask of you?" she demanded.

He looked surprised. "Well, that would more than do it, yeah, but-"

"Give me your cellphone and your ATM card."

"I... sure." He handed them over with obvious reluctance.

She flipped the cellphone open and dialed.

"Hello?"

She read off the ATM card number to the woman on the other end of the phone. "Maintain this account at a minimum of a million dollars for a year," she said. "Wipe the records of this cell phone."

She crushed the cell phone and handed him the ATM card.

"Hey!"

"You can afford a new one. Now, listen. I have some specific things I need from you, and none of it will be easy or simple anymore."

He straightened. "If it's for Eric, I'll do it."

She kissed him on the cheek. "You're a loyal human. It gives me faith that perhaps not all humans are in the process of going insane. Just most." She pulled him over to a bench nearby and sat down with him. "From now on, you will spend every night at Fangtasia. You will not maintain your day job, because your entire job will be to do your best to make sure that Eric is alive and well every night. If anything unusual happens such as the bar closing down or being invaded by vampires, you call for me."

"How do I do that?"

"Just imagine in your mind that you're yelling for me, and I'll know."

"I didn't know you're telepathic," he said, blushing to the roots of his hair.

She chuckled. "I'm not, Andrew. Relax." Then she sobered. "I'm asking you, though, to be Mine."

He started to speak, and she cut him off. "There are things you have to know, first, Andrew. And I want you to listen up and really hear and comprehend what I'm saying to you. It's serious business. I mean that."

"Okay," he agreed.

"If you agree to become Mine, you will have to drink some of my blood-"

"Eww," he interjected.

She smiled, but there was no humor or joy in it. It was a hard smile, meant to sober him. "My blood is potent. It is more potent than any street drug on the market—or off the market. Overdose on them and survive it, and you will still not approach the potency of my blood. I am ancient beyond what you can imagine, and the magic in a single drop of my blood will give you strength and endurance you cannot yet begin to fathom. You can pick up a car or bend a railing with your bare hands."

"Really? That's awesome!"

"No, Andrew. It's not. By itself it sounds great, but you will have such strength even when you want to make love. If you want to hug someone tight, you could crush his or her ribs to paste. If you get angry and hit a wall, you can knock a building down. This is no joke, and it is nothing to take lightly."

He was looking at her with a growing sort of horror.

"It gets worse, Andrew. With the blood comes desires you've not even touched upon so far. At your most sexual moments, you had nowhere near the lust you will feel. Your hunger will be magnified a thousand times. I suggest raw meat, in point of fact."

He pulled another face. "Gross."

"You'll have acquired a taste for it before the night is through." She stood up. "You also must understand some other things. You will be as much like a vampire as a human can get. You will burn badly in the sun—though you won't die. You will have lusts and cravings far more potent than any that a mere human can feel. You will know rages so powerful that you will break and destroy things before you realized the thought occurred to you to do it.

"What I'm asking of you is no small sacrifice. It could cost you loved ones, even your own life and future. And you will crave me and dream of me."

He ran a hand through his hair. "We didn't really have sex, did we? You were too sweet to be a vampire."

"No, Andrew. I cannot have sex with humans. You are too fragile. I have even harmed Eric a few times, without intending to. I once..." she realized what she was about to say and sought a different way to say it, "I... he... he did something that made me react. I didn't intend to, but I... I hit him in the face with my head. I shattered his jaw and it took quite some time to heal." She smiled slightly as he touched his jaw in obvious sympathy. "If it had been you, Andrew, I would have pulverized your head. Humans can't heal from that."

"Uh, yeah. I mean no. No, we can't." He rubbed his face with his hands, resting it there for a few moments. "You need someone to look after Eric, don't you?"

"I do. And this is pretty huge. It's... I've roused the rage and terror of the worst and oldest elements of the vampire world. And he hates me now, too."

"Why?"

"He found out I can... well. Better you not know." She sighed heavily. "I need you to look out for him. I need you to call me if anything happens to him. The only way that can happen is if you've had my blood. I cannot hear your call unless you have."

She knelt at his feet. "I know you find it hard to believe, but I am asking you to take on a horrible, heavy burden, and I know it. You may hurt someone you love, and it will be the fault of my blood. My fault for how I endangered Eric and made foolish choices. But I can think of no one with a greater chance of doing this at all. I think that you have the strength to do it well."

"Okay," he finally said. "I owe him. I'll do it."

She opened her wrist and told him, "Dip a fingertip in it. No more, or it might kill you."

He dipped his finger and then grimaced. Closing his eyes, he stuck the finger in his mouth and licked the blood off. Pulling his finger out, he sat for a moment. "I don't-" His eyes opened wide and he lifted a hand. "Holy... oh my god! Wow!"

He started laughing. "Whoa!" He leaped up off of the bench and started chasing a fleck of dust in the air, laughing hysterically as it flickered away from him. With his new vision, she knew he could make out its crystalline structure now as perfectly as she could. He was mesmerized by the single bit of dust that had enraptured him.

"Oh, ho ho! Wow! This is unbelievable!"

She smiled. At least someone was enjoying himself this night. She watched his antics as he experienced the first taste of her blood. Enhanced perceptions, greater speed and strength... recklessness and impaired judgment.

"Can I yank this tree up? Like just pull it out of the ground?"

"Yes. But do not, or you may find yourself in jail. If you go to jail and break out, you will not be able to help Eric, because they will then kill you."

"Oh. Yeah. That's a good point. Whoa. You have got the nicest rack I've ever seen! Can I touch it?" He was already reaching for her chest.

She gripped him by the neck and held him away from her. "Get it under control, Andrew. If you touch my breasts, I'll rip your head off."

"Oh, well. Maybe next time," he dropped his hands.

She dropped him, and he grabbed her breast and ran, laughing maniacally.

It was going to be a long night.


	8. A New Breed

**8. A New Breed**

"Ooh, what is that?" Andrew sniffed the liver in Rhiannon's hand.

"Calf liver," she replied.

"Oh, gross." He backed away. "It smells sweet." He leaned forward.

"It is sweet. Quite delicious. Have a bite. Just one." She held the fork up and he smirked, taking the chunk of liver off of it.

"Mmm, good," he muttered. He picked up the liver and started wolfing it. He stopped for a second, "It's raw."

"Yes. That's what makes it sweet."

"Oh, okay." He ate the rest of the chunk of liver and then grabbed another chunk. "S'good," he said through the next chunk.

It was the final issue she'd had to address with him for the first night. Tomorrow night, she would help him deal with some of the anger issues that were certain to arise. But for now, he was still on the up-high from her blood.

She took him home, a rather roundabout route thanks to his hysterical giggling every time he misdirected her. She warned him to stay home and he promised to do so. There was little she could do, since daytime was coming with extreme haste.

She flitted to an open field and burrowed as fast as she could. She was deep enough when the sun came up, but it had been close.

A few hours later, she was awakened abruptly by Andrew's raw, visceral fear. It was still day, though, and she could do nothing. She quaked, infuriated and devastated. She had drawn him into something terrible, and he was paying the price in excruciating pain.

For almost an hour, the pain continued, the fear an underlying current pulsing like a slow heartbeat. At midday, with Rhiannon leaking steadily with the bleeds, the pain and fear finally stopped.

The link was severed.

Rhiannon sank into the dark sleep of day, sorrow spiraling around her as a devouring serpent.

At last, day passed into night, and she woke, crawling from the bosom of the Earth. Dusting herself off, she tilted her head.

She frowned. She sniffed the air, yet all seemed well. She would have dismissed the feeling as her imagination, except that she had given imagination up so long ago that she couldn't have used it if she'd tried to—and she wasn't trying to.

Blood and dust caked her, but she felt no concern over it. It was not her preferred state, but she had lived worse. Rising into the air, she followed the pull that could not possibly exist. Faster she flew, until she landed in a field. Then she followed the tug into the woods at the edge of it. She walked past it. She stopped and turned around, seeing freshly turned Earth.

Digging furiously, she found cloth. Digging further, she pulled Andrew's body up from the ground. She frowned at him, surprised. She had felt him die, and yet... his heart beat steadily. He had been buried in the ground without oxygen, but his heart was beating.

He groaned, then gasped, then choked and coughed. She held him steady as he vomited mud and gagged.

He sat up at last, looking down and patting himself. "I'm alive!"

"You weren't. What happened? Did you leave home?"

He looked sheepish.

She rolled her eyes and wondered why, in all of her years, she had never managed to find patience for the foolishness of humans.

"I went for more food. I was really hungry!" he objected. "I got jumped on the way to the store. They called me a fangbanger and shot me. Beat me with bats after that."

"You were dead. You should still be dead. Or you should be, at best, a vampire. Though you were not buried together with me, which makes that impossible."

"They were trying to hide me, I guess. Buried me in the woods to hide what they did." He looked at her. "So you don't know what happened to me?"

"I... I'm uncertain. I typically make humans with diluted blood. You're the first one I've given my blood to pure, for... well. A very, very long time. I had expected certain things, but this was not one of them." She looked him over. He didn't look high anymore. "How do you feel?"

"I feel normal. Like before."

"Come here," she asked him.

"Now's your chance to uproot a tree." She had selected a large sapling. "Give this one a try."

He gave her a skeptical look. "Sure."

"It is small. With my blood in your system, it should be a simple matter."

He reached down and grabbed it, squatting and stepping up to get a good pulling position on it. He jerked so hard that when it came free easily, he tumbled backward onto his rump. "Awesome!" he announced.

He got up and walked over to a bigger one, trying with one hand. "Sweet!" was the pronouncement this time as it slid loose easily.

Rhiannon sighed. He was like a five year old human with a new basketball. Or something.

"I would like a shower. Mind if I use yours?"

"Oh yeah. I guess we should go clean up."

She picked him up and took him straight back to his apartment. She took her shower in the modern bathroom, already missing the claw-footed tub she'd had installed in Eric's. Alas, she thought, how much worse it would be back in St. Croix. Not that she would get to see that for probably a year or so, either. If ever.

When she was done, she dressed in the same clothes, damp from washing them in the sink. It was unfortunate, but she had little else. What wasn't at Eric's apartment, was at her home in St. Croix.

He was dressed when she came out. She raised an eyebrow, his general attitude seemed altered. He looked... darker. But her ears reassured her that his heart was beating steady and true. He was not a vampire.

"You feel fine? No hunger? No anger? No excessive sex drive?"

"Nothing. Maybe dying after getting your blood eliminates some of the emotional trauma of having it."

"Hmm, not a theory I'm willing to test. I am concerned, but I do not have time to stay here to help you after tonight."

"Why not? It shouldn't be too hard of a test... oh yeah. I guess killing someone and burying them does kind of sound bad, now I think about it."

"Yes. It has a certain Machiavellian debauchery to it, doesn't it."

"I'm going to Fangtasia tonight."

"Very well. You should drive and try to act as normal as possible. It may be complicated, but doing so will be your best choice."

"No problem." He got up and walked out the door.

Rhiannon stepped out as well, making sure the knob was locked behind her. She went first to a store to make some purchases of clothing and makeup. Then she flew to Fangtasia herself. The same heavy-set man met her at the door, staring at her in consternation. "I'm not supposed to let you in," he told her sheepishly.

Rhiannon stepped back. "I am going inside."

He sighed. "Tell him I tried to stop you, would you?"

She nodded and walked past him. The bar was filled with smoke, mostly the pungent, cloying odor of cigars. The smoke swirled around her as she stepped inside. She didn't bother to try to wave it away, it would just swirl and stick more, she knew.

Eric sat alone at his customary seat, looking at her with hooded eyes.

The room was quiet as people watched, sensing an undercurrent that they didn't understand.

Rhiannon walked to the guard and asked permission to approach. The guard went to Eric and whispered. Rhiannon waited as Eric stared at her, his expression cloaked in a guise of disinterested indifference.

He flicked two fingers at her, the signal that she was allowed to approach.

This time, she didn't bother to quantify her greeting, and knelt openly and fully in front of him on the stage. No one spoke, the soft thump of the music was the only sound beyond the subaudible.

He leaned forward. "Leave. Do not return to my territory."

"Will you not forgive me?" she asked.

"No." He sat back and looked away.

Rhiannon rose with red tears streaking her face and walked out. In the parking lot, she saw that Andrew had arrived. He hadn't made it to the door, and there were young human women and even several vampires flocking to him already.

She almost laughed. He had the inherent sex appeal from her blood, but not the aura of intimidating power that she had. He was in for a time of it. But she couldn't find the amusement it should have raised in her, because her heart was still inside the bar where it had fallen, broken, to the floor at Eric's feet.

She took a deep breath—the humans didn't realize how lucky they were to have the pleasure of it without conscious effort—and left on the fly. There was much to do and far to go. The first of the Authority lived in Washington, DC.

Morning was still an hour away when Rhiannon entered his home. Her hair was now unbound, and she was that Princess from the legends. She had dressed in sheer white, with makeup to make her lips deepest red, her face completely white, and her eyes were ringed in heavy black.

He rose when he saw her, panicked. "Guards!" he shrieked.

"They're dead or gone," Rhiannon told him. She held a head out and dropped it. "They were very loyal. They preferred to die over abandoning you. Until I killed him for trying to shoot me."

He turned to run but she was on him in an instant. He was not so very old as they wanted the other vampires to believe. He was some six hundred years old, and not very strong to begin with, so he was slow. She dragged him back and wrapped silver around him, protecting her own flesh with white gloves only slightly brighter than her hair.

She picked him up and carried him to the vampire Seat of Washington, DC. There, she lowered him, to hang upside-down from the entryway. She knew he would be rescued before dawn, but he would also know her power.

Spreading her arms, she rose from above him, her white clothing and white hair rippling in the wind. Below her, vampires and humans rushed out of the bar. They all stared at her, even the vampires alarmed and surprised by her appearance as she floated in midair.

"The Authority has betrayed you! They have turned you into sheep for the slaughter! They have provoked an ancient legend, and you shall pay the price!"

Then she flitted away, expending tremendous energy to give the impression that she had vanished in a gust of wind. To do so to humans was an easy thing, but to do so to vampires required speeds so tremendous that they transgressed against the laws of nature itself.

She stopped and stole a cellphone from someone walking the street and speaking on it. Hanging up, she dialed. "Release Valentino's assets. He has received his warning." The phone was atomized, drifting to the ground as dust and a few wires.

Then, carefully stashing the gauzy white gown and gloves, she went to ground.

The next night, she visited a brothel in Mexico, where she captured Altaronzio. He was hung upside down, wrapped in silver from a tree.

Rising above it, she told the vampires there, "¡La Autoridad le ha traicionado! ¡Le han girado en oveja para la matanza! ¡Han provocado una antigua leyenda, y usted pagará el precio!" Just as she had in Washington, DC, she flitted so quickly that to the vampires assembled, she seemed to vanish.

The first had been thought to be a dangerous and foolish prank. But before the night was over, the story of the second appearance of "Rhiannon of Legend" had spread through the vampire community of North America.

The next night, she fed by glamoring several humans. After five, she finally ceased, sated and prepared for the next encounter. She was releasing the family and wealth of each member of the Authority as she worked her way through them, but knew that each of them feared they would be the one to die. The vampires did not know that those who were being taken were The Authority themselves. She did not want them dead, only frightened. The vampire world needed control, whether she or they liked it or not.

Rhiannon doubted any would ever suspect those attacked of being members of The Authority. It wasn't the point to expose them, it was the point to display to them without doubt their utter vulnerability to her power.

But the next target was in France, and had already had time to prepare her defenses and even move if she chose to. The hunt would not be as simple as these two had been. They had not been forewarned... but the rest were.

No one else might know that she was systematically hunting The Authority themselves... but the Authority would know now.

Rhiannon's fangs clicked out. Crouching, she lunged into the air, giving her flight the powerful added impetus of a mighty liftoff. She landed outside of Touros, Brazil. There, although it was early, she rested. Several hours remained, but the flight across the water was too far. She would die if she could not burrow into the ground quickly enough upon arrival.

Unfortunately, it gave her time to think, ponder, and wonder. She ached with the pain of loss, the knowledge that Eric had spurned her. Somehow, though she had been prepared to leave him the very night of their capture, being away from him under these new circumstances ate at her more deeply than she cared contemplate.

The strange reaction of Andrew to her blood also weighed on her mind. She could feel his emotions more strongly than the others, but only if she concentrated. Otherwise, it was only strong emotions that triggered her awareness.

So far, he had shown no exceptional rages, which was one of the effects of her blood even on those trained to receive the diluted blood.

She lowered her head into her hands and groaned. She had not been fair to him. She should have diluted the blood for him, too, but she had wanted him to have the extreme enhancements her blood could provide. Yet she couldn't deny the facts—the real results of exposure to her pure blood was as yet unknown. Especially as much of it as he had taken.

For her warriors, she put a single drop into a glass of wine, and it was portioned amongst ten of them.

He had been beyond the barrier of death and returned. But he had not returned dead as a vampire would. He had crossed the portal of mortality. She did not know what she had created, but she knew that he suspended the laws of nature even more than she did.

And the worst part was that, without knowing for sure what he was or his ultimate capabilities, she had set him at Eric's door.


	9. My Son, My Student

**9. My Son, My Student**

The next night, she climbed out and dressed in her 'legend' clothing. She had spent the day in meditation, gathering power. She was ready to fly across an entire ocean—she hoped. From Brazil, South America, she intended to fly over to Africa. From there, she would make her way to France.

But before she could go, she felt a surge of deep fear from Andrew. Putting aside her plans instantly, she leaped and sped over the Gulf of Mexico toward Louisiana. His fear began to turn into rage, and she smiled, fangs out.

He was coming into his own this night, provided he survived.

She zeroed in on his location. He was in Shreveport, near his apartment. But he felt altered, and she smelled the acrid fumes of magic in the air. Whatever he had tangled with was going to be formidable in the extreme. A tremor ran through her, she was glad that she had fed well and meditated, despite the pain of it.

She landed where she felt him, and for a moment was disoriented, shocked. He wasn't there... or was he?

Disbelief flooded her. In front of her was a white lion, roaring and snarling. He was under attack by a group of humans, one of whom held a gun, the barrel smoking as he tried in vain to keep shooting it.

Rhiannon roared, an unearthly sound of ancient fury. She joined the fray, knowing the lion for who he was. Three more guns had been emptied into the body of the lion, and she grasped the owners of the guns first, knowing that their intent had been to murder her Progeny.

Fury burned bright in her, and she took the three and ripped open the top of a large moving van nearby. She shoved them inside and began gathering up the others. She stuffed them all inside, careless of whether they landed on each other or hit the ground with punishing force.

Within seconds, the entire group was rounded up, even the ones who foolishly thought they could run from the white fury that had erupted in their midst.

One of the braver of the group thought he would climb his fellows to get out of the van. He met the snarling face of an ancient vampire, who fed from him, then dropped his still-living, terrified body onto his fellows.

She curled the top of the moving van back over it to seal the contents. They would not die, but it would be a long, long, uncomfortable night and day.

Then she landed on the ground, ignoring the new blood that streaked her.

The lion lay near death on the ground, panting and wheezing. She flickered her wrist and the spell on him dissipated.

"Drink, Andrew," she commanded him, tearing her wrist open and offering it to him.

He turned away, muttering weakly, "Isn't it dangerous?"

"Not as dangerous as death. But no, it is no longer dangerous for you."

He grasped her wrist and drank, falling back to the ground. He groaned and cried out as bullets were shoved from his body, tearing their way back through organs as they were ejected with brutal efficiency. At last, he lay whole and healed on the ground, his jeans and shirt covered in blood and dirt.

"What happened?" Rhiannon asked.

He sighed. "They found out that I was alive yesterday. They came to finish the job and I trounced them. So this time, they brought friends. A lot."

She chuckled. "Making enemies already. Quite a talent."

"Why is your blood no longer dangerous to me? Because I've had some?"

"No. Because you are... you are my Progeny now. But not of my vampire half."

He stood up, trying to dust himself off and only getting dirtier. "Do you have halfs?"

"I was something else before I became a vampire. Something at complete odds with what I am now. And now... you are what I once was."

He chuckled. "I hope I'm not a girl."

She didn't smile. "You are a druid. And because you are the only druid left alive since the Christians butchered them all, you are the druid King."

"A druid? What's a druid? What does a druid do?"

"You are something so completely at odds with my own nature that it boggles the mind. You are a sorcerer. A healer."

"I thought druids were satan worshipers who eat babies and have violent orgies under the full moon."

"That sounds more like vampires, doesn't it?"

"Well, if they're healers, why did the Christians kill them?"

She sighed. She suspected she was about to blow up his whole fantasy of the world. "Most of the Christians were vampires. Sorcerers—you-are in complete opposition to their nature. You can destroy them. If you are as powerful as my family was, you will be nearly unstoppable unless they come against you in force. They demonized your kind, and systematically slaughtered them until none remained to harm them."

"Is that what happened to you?"

"No. There were no Christians until the last couple of thousand years. No Judaism until a thousand years before that."

"But-"

"Andrew, history has been rewritten a thousand times. In my lifetime, I have seen civilizations rise and fall like shadows at evening. The culture of my youth was far advanced to yours. A cataclysm struck from space and destroyed everything. Human culture has been wiped out and renewed repeatedly. Why do you think that there are hieroglyphs of helicopters in the pyramids, time travel?" she scoffed.

"There are?"

She sighed.

"Andrew, I cannot explain the world to you. Your emergence as a druid has altered everything. I had work to do which must now be put off for as long as it takes to train you as a druid. I am no longer a druid myself, because the vampire part of myself has subsumed it. It is going to be difficult for both of us, especially since you draw most of your power from the sun, and the only sun power we will have is the moon."

She groaned. "We cannot stay in the city, either. First misfire and you'll level it."

She looked up in surprise as Eric arrived. She stepped in front of Andrew and hissed, fangs ejected. She should have known Eric would sense her presence so close to his Seat.

"I told you to stay out of my territory," he snapped, hissing back.

"I have come to claim my Progeny," she growled. "We were just leaving."

"We were?" Andrew objected. "But-"

"Too late for that now," she told him. "You have other, more pressing responsibilities."

Eric snarled again. "I smell something that does not belong here." He sniffed openly. "I smell light."

His eyes fixed on Andrew. "You! What are you? You don't smell faerie, but you smell... light."

"He is my Progeny. I claim him." Rhiannon stated.

Eric's eyes snapped to hers.

"The legends are true?" he asked, his voice disbelieving.

"What legends?" Andrew asked, looking between the two of them.

"Rhiannon of legend was a druid princess. One of the most powerful of her generation." Eric said, staring into Rhiannon's eyes.

"The most powerful that ever lived," Rhiannon told him without arrogance.

He stepped backward, looking at her in horror.

"And he-"

"He is the Progeny of my druid self. The vampire half died, and the druid part remains."

Eric flitted away without challenging her further. Tears ran down her face.

"What does that mean?" Andrew asked.

"It means that you have just become the most hunted man in the entire world," she answered him over her shoulder. "And if you do not train immediately, you will be dead and your kind will once more be extinct."

"You keep saying 'my kind', but how can that be, if you're what made me?"

"The part of you that was my vampire self had to die so that the druid blood could be reborn. The druid part of me is something I can only rarely access. It allows me sometimes to meditate during the day and call upon the magic that once came to my call with great joy. But the suffering it requires for me to do it is terrible, for that part of me is everything that my dominant nature is not. I am not, strictly speaking, a druid, myself."

She picked him up and flew with him until she was in the Adirondacks of Vermont. There, she skimmed until she found what she was looking for—an old abandoned group of caves inhabited only by bats and a racoon.

"I will teach you at night, as I was taught. Your power is magnified a thousandfold during the day, so you would do well not to practice in the day until you have fully and completely mastered the magic of the moon." She saw him start to speak. "Yes, that's where the lie comes from that we practice magic only by night in the light of the moon. Practicing with small amounts of magic prepares you to bridle the forces of the sun. The sun is the most powerful force available to workers of magic. But as day is the vulnerability of the vampire, so is night the time when you are least powerful of all—and the most hunted."

"Why can't I just not do magic? If I didn't do anything to them, they'd leave me alone, wouldn't they?"

"No." She sighed. "You will do magic, Andrew. You don't have a choice in that. You should understand that from what just happened. Did you cast the spell that changed you into a lion intentionally?"

"I... no."

"Why a lion?" she asked him.

"Well, you know. King of the jungle. Concrete jungle..." he saw the look on her face and chuckled wryly. "You don't have any idea what I'm saying, do you?"

"Is it a movie thing? I don't watch movies."

"Yeah, sort of, I guess. I just wished I was a lion or something powerful so I could kick their asses. Next time, I'll wish to be a vampire."

She felt a frisson of fear run down her spine. "Don't do that. Ever. Getting that wish is a special kind of hell."

"Oh. Right. I'm sorry."

Rhiannon felt a strange mix of emotions. Another in a nearly eternal list of things to feel guilty for. She sighed around the guilt and gave him an exercise to help him learn the basics of meditation. Then she stood and looked out across the landscape, lights from a distant city glittering far below.

She had created an unbelievable tangle. And she knew that, by harboring a druid—the mortal enemy of vampires—she had burned the final bridge with Eric. Bloody tears trickled down her face as pure emotional pain supplanted hope in her heart.

For weeks, she trained Andrew, pushing him hard. Finally, an argument erupted.

"I need people! I'm all alone here except for you, and all we do is magic, magic, magic. And I don't want to be a vegetarian!"

She crossed her arms. "There is nowhere in this world that you can go where there are no vampires," she replied. "It is not my choice to keep you here simply to deprive you. You are in danger everywhere. Even here, one could catch scent of you, and then I would be forced to kill him or her. You will not be a vegetarian forever, either."

He yelled, pulling on his own hair. "Arg! I can't stand it anymore!"

"You must, or you will be cut down where you land," Rhiannon told him, cold and uncompromising. "I will not risk your life when you are barely able to even hold energy, much less use it with intelligent direction."

"I hate you. I wish I'd never met you."

She wished the same, and for the same reason—because this experience was hell for him.

A month went by and he had a breakthrough. Another month and he was able to calm and heal an injured squirrel.

"Wow," he said. "I can't believe it. He let me walk right up to him and heal him!" He stood watching it. "So when do I get to learn the good stuff? I mean, like fireballs and ice bombs and stuff?"

"This is not World of Warcraft, Andrew. Your magic is defensive or healing in nature."

He sighed. "No wonder we're extinct."

She chuckled. It wasn't an altogether inaccurate observation.

"So, are you like, my mom, or something?" he asked abruptly.

Startled by the change in conversation, Rhiannon hesitated. "Not really. We do not share DNA. You are the offspring of my druidic nature, and I am a vampire."

"Well, that's good. Cause otherwise, dream or no dream... that... uh. You know. It would squick me out." He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his worn, tattered jeans.

A month later, his feet began to bleed and hurt.

Rhiannon picked up his shoes. "Are these made with real leather?"

"Yes."

"You cannot wear them any longer, then. You will have to draw an animal to you, and make moccasins."

"Well, won't those be leather, too? Am I always going to bleed if I wear leather?"

"Yes, they will be leather. That you make yourself. But the hide used to make these shoes was taken, not surrendered. That is the difference in what you, as a druid, can wear or not wear."

"This shit sucks. I don't want to do it anymore."

Rhiannon let him stomp off into the cave. Pointing out that he had no choice was meaningless. He knew it and she knew it. This was simply emotional overflow.

The next night, he drew an old wolf to the camp.

"A disperser," Rhiannon told him after he had killed it. At his curious look, she answered, "Old wolves will sometimes wander even hundreds of miles from their home territory. There are no wolves in this area anymore, so he must have wandered far. It is a great honor that he came to you to end his life."

Andrew patted the wolf's soft fur. A tear fell to land on his hand.

She knelt beside him. "He chose you to end his life. You have honored him by accepting his gift. Do not be sad for him. In death, he would have fed scavengers. Now, he will feed scavengers and clothe you. It was his choice. Honor it with action, not tears."

She showed him how to skin the wolf, and then told him to break the skull open.

"Gross. This is gross. Why do I have to do that?"

"Every animal's brain is the exact right size to tan its own hide on both sides."

"What? That's disgusting."

"You learn to be a druid, or you die, Andrew. You will only be able to wear natural articles of clothing soon. If you do not learn how to tan hides and how to weave your own things, you will go naked, even in the winter. And winter is coming to this place soon."

She helped Andrew create heavy winter boots, as well as a pair of soft summer mocs from the wolf's pelt.

Fall came and deer were drawn to him for their final moments. She taught him how to use urine with the brain matter to make the hides white. By the time winter was upon them, he had full winter gear, and warm hides for sleeping in the cave. He could sustain a fire with its original fuel for the entire night with his magic, and injured animals from the area flocked to him.

The only time Rhiannon left him was to feed. She could no longer feed off of Andrew, because his blood now pulsed with the power of the sun. His blood was life for humans or animals—death for her or any other vampire who might make the error of trying to feed from him.

By Spring, he was able to alter his form at will, and had begun practicing his magic during the daytime while Rhiannon slept the deathly sleep.

The ground had thawed and flowers were ending their first blooming cycle when she told him, "It's time for me to go. You are as trained as I have the ability to train you. You must discover the rest on your own. You have equaled and surpassed the training I had when I was Turned."

"What? You're leaving me?"

"You can turn into any creature you desire and go wherever you wish. You still have a million dollars in your account, so you can live among the humans again if you so desire, provided you avoid leather or synthetic fabrics."

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"I must finish what I started before you were reborn. I have to go and confront the remaining three of the Authority."

"Well, I'm going with you," he said. He got up and started back into the cave.

"You cannot. I travel by night. You are a creature of the day."

"No way. I'm going with you."

"You can not go with me, Andrew."

"I can protect you during the day," he argued. "And I can fly with you at night. I can match your speed, you said so yourself." Then he scowled at her. "I can track you. Either you let me come with you, or I'll just follow you."

"You can not track vampires in flight," she argued.

"No, but I can track you. I can feel you. Like we're linked or bonded or something."

"Fucking druids," she growled, turning away from him. His power clearly was able to reverse the course of the bond at his will. "Do you understand how dangerous that makes you to me?"

"You won't hurt me."

"But others can use you to hurt me."

"I'd die first."

"No doubt. But how many people would you watch suffer and die horrific deaths before you did it?" He could no longer be glamored, but that was not the only influence available to vampires.

He stared at her, mouth hanging open.

"There are ways to bend your will that do not require killing you, Andrew. I am the least ruthless of all of the vampires you'll ever meet, and I would torture people to save you, or to save Eric. The danger you are putting yourself and others in is staggering. Going with me would be foolishness."

His eyes narrowed and he crossed his arms. "I'm going with you. You aren't going to manipulate or bully me out of it. And that's that."

So when she left the next night to go down to the tip of Florida, she was attended by the fastest flying owl in the world.


	10. White Walker

**10. White Walker**

"You can not keep up with me," she argued with him for the fifth time that night.

"I kept up okay as an owl," he grumbled belligerently.

"No, I let you keep up as an owl," she answered. "You can not keep up. You will have to get there some other way."

"You can carry me, you do it all the time." He was clearly not going to let it go.

"I carry you over land, at low speed," she scowled at him. "You're a bit on the heavy side."

"Hey, I work out, I'm not heavy!"

"You're not fat, Andrew; you're heavy. It is not necessarily the same thing."

"Well, what if I was a mouse or a rat or something? A mouse is light."

She closed her eyes and wished again for patience. "You want me to carry a rat over the ocean? If you fall into the water, then you will be stuck at sea, and doubtless eaten within minutes."

"Just carry me in the backpack. And besides, if I fall off, I'll turn into a whale. Who's going to eat a whale?"

He had cornered her neatly.

"Fine. Be a rat. It's remarkably apropos."

He was too busy grinning triumphantly to take offense. He shimmered and altered, until he was sitting up on back legs, sniffing. She picked him up and opened the pack. He waddled inside. Not surprisingly, he was white.

She shook her head and gathered her strength. She'd ask him on the other side why he was always white.

She flew low across the water, pushing herself as hard as she could with the power she'd gathered through her feeding and meditating. The added weight was minor, but she was already taking a calculated risk. If she didn't make it into the ground... the thought did not bear dwelling on.

She pushed herself harder, streaking across the water. But the Earth was a part of her source of energy, and the further she went, the more it was buried by water. She slowed, not because of insufficient power, but because the further the Earth retreated below the water, the greater the power it took to fly.

Soon she was moving at the speed of a newborn vampire. Below her, to her surprise, she saw dolphins pacing her for a short period. She smiled. They sensed the presence of a druid, as all animals could. A whale surfaced a while later, blowing and breaching in the water to greet the druid flying overhead.

She got nearer to Africa, and the depth of the water began to decrease. Her speed picked back up, but so did her sense of urgency. She had slowed more than she'd hoped, and feared that she would not make it.

She picked up greater and greater speed until she realized that she had miscalculated. Stopping when one was moving at such a rate of speed was difficult at best when one's power was almost completely gone. But morning was fast approaching so she had even less time for niceties. She pulled the backpack out. "Change to a bird!" she cried. Then she opened it and dropped it, before gathering herself for impact.

She struck the ground with tremendous force in the province of Madhya Pradesh, just outside of Khonra. The next day, there were reports of the concussive 'boom' of her landing, and the strange white falcon that had been seen catching something in midair before landing just as the sun rose.

Rhiannon was underground, but badly broken. She could not meditate that day, for it took all of the energy of the Earth and the deathly sleep to restore her broken form.

"That was awesome!" greeted her from Andrew as she climbed out of her hole the next evening.

Dirty, miserable, and irritated, she sat and glared at him.

"What?" he demanded. "It was!"

"Easy for you to say," she growled. "I'm going to go feed."

She glamored a single victim, hating the necessity for it. She did not feed on more than one, though. She was not going to expend much energy this night. The Authority had waited this long, they could wait a while longer.

If the thought that finishing quickly would let her go back to see if Eric was fine that much sooner, she showed no sign of it and simply started walking.

"So, I had this idea, right? Wait," he scurried to catch up to her, even though she was only walking at human speed.

He dashed around her and started talking to her, walking backwards. "So you're doing this Rhiannon thing, right?"

She raised her eyebrows and gave him a sour look.

"No, I mean the legendary Rhiannon thing. With the white and all that. Yeah? So, see, here's my idea. This is great, you're gonna love it-"

"No, Andrew."

"What, you haven't even heard it yet!" he fell in beside her now.

"I'm not going along with whatever hairbrained scheme you've come up with this time."

"Awww, don't you even want to hear it first?"

"No."

"Damn. Well, listen, though, it's really cool." He hefted the backpack higher. "Okay, so you're supposed to be this druid princess, right? So-"

"I was a druid princess, Andrew. I am not one now."

"But they don't know that. They think you're a druid and you can call animals and stuff, right? So what if you didn't fly in like a vampire, but instead you ride in on a white horse?"

"A white horse?" She was pretty sure he was insane.

"Yeah, me. You know, you could ride me in there." He looked flustered. "I mean that in the horse sense, not in the... well. You know."

"You cannot seriously think that I'm going to let a twenty year old druid-"

"I'm twenty-four," he argued.

"Andrew. Listen to me carefully. You are not even an infant beside these vampires. You are insane if you think that I'm going to risk the only living druid on these escapades."

"Well, what am I going to do, hide forever? I'm trained and-"

"No, Andrew."

"Oh, come on!"

"No!"

"That's not fair!"

"And that's why you're not going, Andrew! You sound like a two year old."

"You need my help. You need animals. I can be animals. Like, I could be a hawk and fly around your head. Or a horse. I could be a bull and go on a rampage-"

"No! Damn it, Andrew!"

"How are you going to be a proper Druid Princess without animals? You need me."

He was tugging at her resolve, and that was dangerous for him.

"Do you have any concept at all of just how dangerous any of this is?"

"Of course I do. But they've already killed my kind off once. I want to make a difference before they get me. You forget, I agreed to any of this because I owe Eric. You don't own me. If you're not going to treat me like I have some intelligence, then I'll leave tomorrow while you're asleep."

Her fangs clicked out and she hissed at him. "You'll die without me."

"See?" he demanded. "That's what I'm talking about. Like I'm too stupid to take care of myself."

"I asked you not to leave your apartment. You left. You then provoked the gang that attacked you the first time..."

"That was over a year ago. People grow up, you know. And I didn't know how serious it was then. I didn't think I'd be killed and shot. Now I know how many people want to kill me. That's an advantage. Well, not people wanting to kill me, but knowing about it, I mean."

Rhiannon pressed her fingers against her forehead.

"Alright. I will look for a way for you to help me when I look the situation over."

"YES!" he yelled, as if he had just won a major victory.

And, she supposed, in a way he had. That she was considering even thinking about giving him a part in the scheme to warn off the Authority was insanity. Part of her wished she'd not released their assets after finding out about Andrew, but there was nothing she could do now.

Besides, who knew what havoc it might have played on the vampire world if she'd not done so. And havoc in the vampire world always spilled over into the human world.

They traveled for another hour, until Andrew asked, "Do you still think about him?"

She didn't need to ask who he meant. "All the time. One might think that a year is not so long when you're old, but time is relative to the emotions involved. It just as well have been forever."

"He's pretty pissed at you."

"Yes, Andrew. How kind of you to remind me."

"Part of it is me, huh."

"Yes, most likely. Not you specifically. But harboring a druid... serious, serious offense to vampires."

He prodded her rib with his elbow, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. "Maybe he's just jealous."

She fanged and hissed at him.

"Heh, sorry," he said sheepishly. "Sometimes I forget that you're a big bad nasty vampire. You're so little!"

Her eyes narrowed and she glared at him.

"Oh, come on. We could die soon. Lighten up!"

"You find impending death to be reason for levity?"

"More fun than being a grumpy asshole all the time. For the rest of us, anyway," he muttered as he stopped to rummage in his pack.

"I heard that."

He trotted to catch up to her.

"So yeah, you've never really told me how old you actually are. Inquiring minds want to know, you know."

"No, I haven't."

"Please?"

"Not polite to ask a lady her age, Andrew. Not even for a druid."

"Why is it a big secret? You look like you're about, like, I dunno, twenty-two."

She sighed. "I don't tell because it's nearly impossible to know. As each new civilization dawns after a crisis, they create their own calendars and base it off of their own memories of events. The current calendar isn't even based on astronomy as they once were. You know how old you are because you have a fixed date for when you were born. But I was born in the third year of the scorpion. So how old am I?"

"Uh. That's not a real year."

"Not anymore. But if people still told time by the stars, it would be a perfectly logical date. The nearest I can figure is that my birthday was something like eighteen thousand, three hundred years ago. Give or take. And I was twenty-seven when I was turned. The world was in Scorpio in the precession of the equinoxes during my birth, and now we are on the edge of Aquarius."

"Holy shit, that's old!"

She chuckled. "Very."

"How did you live so long? Why hasn't any other vampire done it?"

"I mostly hid and almost never kill. I'm a very shy, retiring sort of vampire."

"You're noble, too."

She glared at him.

"Er, for a blood sucking, murderous beast. And all that. I meant." He blinked and looked away, clearly embarrassed. "Sorry."

"I suppose that 'noble' is as accurate a description of a druid princess as any, but it's important to understand that I am no longer that woman."

"So, you were like, really powerful?"

She stopped and put her hands on her hips. "What is it with you humans? Always with the questions. Why, why, why? What, what, what? Where, who, when?" She shook her head. "Is it really necessary for you to know?"

"Well, you said you can't drink my blood anymore because I'm a druid. So what was the vampire going to do to you?"

"Druid flesh is the only flesh that vampires can eat. And, apparently, it is very sweet. And, if the stories are true, also unusually filling and powerful." She clicked her fangs out. "Shall we test to find out?"

"Whoa, hey! No!" he jumped away.

"Then stop nattering at me."

He fell silent immediately, and Rhiannon picked him up and flitted for several hours, careful to avoid human settlements and launching into the air when the terrain impeded her. Andrew bore it at first, but then he transformed into a house cat, and she nearly dropped him. It did, though, make traveling quite a bit more comfortable.

Several nights later, they were at the shore of the Mediterranean in the mountains of Algeria; Chréa National Park..

She sat down, watching him meditate an invitation to his dinner. When the wild boar arrived and he killed and began to clean it, she asked him, "So why all the white?"

"Oh. Well. Cause, you know. The whole white lady thing you got going on. It matches."


	11. Reunion

**11. Reunion**

When they arrived at Tulle, France, Rhiannon got them a room at the Hôtel du Réglage Sun, or 'Hotel of the Setting Sun', which catered to vampires. She opened the window to let in the white owl and scowled at him as he altered form.

"I think you get grumpier every day," he told her.

"Do you not realize just how much attention white animals attract? You should choose some other color while we're not 'scaring vampires'." She said it snidely, since 'scaring vampires' was his pet name for the very, very dangerous 'game' they were playing.

She sat down to the complimentary computer the hotel offered and ordered a tailor and a 'nightcap'. Young and male, since she had the sinking feeling that Andrew wouldn't be able to resist a girl. He'd gotten quite excited seeing some of them walking around earlier that night. And the sex appeal that was a natural result of her blood was working on him still.

"There is a convention tomorrow. It will be the perfect opportunity for me to carry out a single ploy, rather than requiring us to singularly visit each of them. So far as I can tell, they should all three be there. And it's a fairly large convention, because getting this room required a substantial bribe."

She leaned back on the—no surprise—red sofa and stretched.

Andrew ducked into the bedroom as a discreet knock came on the door.

When Rhiannon opened it, she found a young man standing there. "Room service," he said, pitching his voice low. Rhiannon almost sighed. Somehow these arrangements always made her feel dirty.

"Come inside," she responded, closing the door behind him.

"Bonjour madame, j'ai mangé seulement agrumes pour plusieurs semaines. J'espère que la saveur satisfait," he said, meaning 'Hello madam, I have eaten only citrus for several weeks. I hope the flavor satisfies.'

"I don't believe that's healthy," she muttered. When he looked puzzled by her English, she said, "Rien, très chers. Asseyez-vous." Or, 'Nothing, my dear. Have a seat.'

She drank from him and glamored him. She knew it was common practice to engage in sexual activity with them, even though it wasn't strictly legal. They were generally eager to be used in such a manner, and thus nothing was ever said of it by any of the involved parties.

"Sommeil, et rêve de faire l'amour pour moi." She finished the glamor, 'Sleep, and dream of making love to me.'

She went into the other room. "You speak French?" Andrew asked.

"I speak thousands of languages. Most of them dead ones."

He looked surprised, then thoughtful. "You could translate ancient tablets and stuff, then, huh."

"The tablets will always say what those in power want them to say. The ones that do not are destroyed."

"You've got a bad attitude, you know that?"

"Dawn arrives soon. Be certain he leaves. Tomorrow night I will inspect the venue of the convention and the night after will be the confrontation."

"Did you think of anything for me to do?"

"Yes. But first we must see the venue and be certain it will work."

She rested that day, and the next night went to inspect the area the vampires would be meeting at. It was a large outdoor pavilion, to her surprise. The pavilion's roof was solid enough, high and arching. For her plan, it should work perfectly.

She launched up into the sky, landing on the top of the elegant, domed arch of the pavilion's top.

She nearly fell back off, realizing she wasn't alone.

"What took you so long?" the vampire sitting on one of the fluffy decorative upper domes asked.

"What made you think I would be here?" she asked.

"It's a perfect opportunity to screw with the Authority. I can't imagine you missing such a chance after they captured you and tried to put you on trial."

"Is that what you think this is about?"

He flitted and was inches from her. "Isn't it? How much revenge is enough?"

"It isn't about revenge, Eric. It's about protection."

He scoffed. "You don't need protection."

She cocked her head at him. "Are you so blind that you cannot see the true purpose of this?" She wanted to touch him. She wanted to do more than touch him.

He stood looking at her, saying nothing for long moments. "You are going to get yourself killed if you try something tonight. They want you badly."

"They always have," she answered. "Now that I have a druid offspring, I'm certain they will be that much more determined. And that is why this is that much more important."

"They don't know," he said softly. "I hid a faerie, I am certainly not in a position to judge you for hiding your Progeny."

"You didn't tell them?"

"I don't tell them everything, Rhiannon."

"But you sent me away." She was puzzled. Why would he keep her secret? It was clear that he was enraged with her.

"You glamored me." He scowled as he said it.

"I was protecting myself."

"From me," he said it tersely, impatiently.

"From the vampire Sheriff who had just discovered me and knew I was old and undocumented," she argued. "There's a difference."

"Only once, then?"

She looked away. He growled.

He closed the inches between them, but did not wrap an arm around her. He spoke softly in her ear, "You lived with me. You laid in my bed. You laid in my arms. Not once did you tell me who you were or what you had done."

"You would have sent me away," she whispered.

"You'll never know now, will you."

He was gone and she was left swaying in the breeze of his passing. A chill crossed her heart, and she shivered.

She looked over the pavilion further, until she was certain that she had covered every angle. Eric's lack of faith in her was disheartening, but it meant little in the bigger picture.

She went to Elizabeth's ancient castle and searched the grounds. Then she set herself up on a ledge to wait. It was extremely close to dawn when the female member of the Authority arrived home in her limo. The gates opened and closed, and security came out in force.

Rhiannon smiled, but it was not a pleasant smile. When Elizabeth entered the building, Rhiannon dropped the chains on her, her black gloves protecting her from her own silver. She picked Elizabeth up and flitted out the same window she had entered through, making it back to her hotel and closing the door to her room just in time for the need to rest to steal over her.

With Andrew in the form of a wolf to watch over Elizabeth, Rhiannon slept.

Waking that evening, she blindfolded Elizabeth and left the room. She ate, glamoring multiple humans until she was sated. She paid each one of them well in Euros and then returned to her hotel room. The convention would start in an hour.

She picked the other woman up and, ignoring her grunting complaints, flew with her and Andrew to the venue. She set Andrew down, he in his rat form, and waited for the vampires to arrive. When Elizabeth tried to mumble and catch the attention of the keen eared vampires below, Rhiannon choked her into silence.

Below, the vampires rattled on about progressive human-vampire policies in the USA and how to bring them to Europe.

When she felt the time was right, Rhiannon nodded at Andrew. He changed forms and clung to her. Rhiannon broke the roof of the pavillion and dropped Elizabeth through it. She dropped with her, stopping in the center of the pavilion with the squirming Elizabeth dangling from her hand.

She dropped her, then said, "The Authority has betrayed you! They have turned you into sheep for the slaughter! They have provoked an ancient legend, and you shall pay the price!" first in English, then in French. "If they are not convinced to end their persecution of me and mine, I shall begin killing every vampire I see!"

At the words, a prearranged signal, Andrew let go of her and she flitted with such great speed that she 'disappeared'. In her place was a giant white vampire bat, which gave a cry and fluttered through the hole Rhiannon had made in the roof. She grabbed it and flitted away, looking back to see several confused vampires fly up onto the roof, searching and shouting to each other.

Back at their hotel room, Andrew whooped and danced. "That was the best moment of my entire life! Man, you should have seen the looks on their faces when they thought you turned into a bat! Holy shit! That was fantastic!"

"You're insane." Eric hovered outside the window.

Rhiannon was taken aback. "You followed me?" It was impossible that he had matched her speed.

"Yesterday," he answered. "You took Elizabeth right from her own stronghold. I could never have imagined that was possible."

"She wasn't very careful. I think they got complacent." She changed the subject, "Have they done anything to harm you?"

He shrugged negligently. "A few. A fire at my summer house in Brazil. Some stock market games. Veiled threats. Why?"

"If it doesn't stop, I will kill them all."

He chuckled and ducked inside. "Do you think I need your help?" Then he stopped and looked at Andrew. "So you are living with your Progeny now? He smells delicious."

"His blood is poison," Rhiannon warned.

"His flesh is not," Eric replied, snapping his fangs out.

"You're scaring him. That's very rude."

"Now that your prank on the Authority is finished, what will you do? Without your petty vengeance, won't you be bored?"

"I'll go home, where there is peace and solitude. All I ever wanted was to be left alone."

"Then why did you come back and present yourself to me?"

"It was the courteous thing to do," she answered, turning away and flicking imaginary lint off of her white dress.

"Oh, bullshit. You didn't worry about courtesy when you glamored me."

"That was to protect myself. And you! I didn't want to do it."

"I want some honesty from you," Eric told her. "If you want my forgiveness, I want some honesty. How old are you, really?"

She stiffened. "Please don't ask me that, Eric. Anything but that-"

"She's eighteen thousand. She told me."

"Andrew!" Rhiannon barked.

"What? You and he..." Andrew made mashing together gestures with his hands, "... I think he kind of should know how old you are!"

Eric was staring at her with the horrified look she'd expected. "You really could snap me like a twig," he said. "You're not just Rhiannon, you're the Immortal."

Rhiannon sank to her knees. "I didn't choose to be this, Eric. It wasn't my fault."

"What is it? What happened? Who's the Immortal?" Andrew demanded.

"Vampire apocalypse," Eric answered. "The worst killing of vampires in known history. The vampires came together to hunt the Immortal. They chained her in the abyss."

"The Grand Canyon," Rhiannon supplied.

"They intended for her to meet the sun. But she... she got loose. She killed everyone in the abyss. Not a single vampire was spared. When others who hadn't made it there for the subduing arrived, they found not a single living thing of any kind in the abyss."

"Wow," Andrew said. "Brutal."

A bloody tear sparkled through the air with exquisite slowness to land on her white dress and bounce, leaving a trail of death behind it.

"I've pretty much just met the Hitler of vampires," Eric told Andrew.

"And slept with her," Andrew helpfully pointed out.

"Yes, thank you, Andrew. Shut up. Please," Rhiannon said, her voice low and choked.

"Oh! Shit. I'm sorry. You're right." He went into the bedroom and shut the door.

"Fifteen thousand vampires were slaughtered in the abyss," Eric said, stepping back to lean, disbelieving, against the windowsill.

"They aren't entirely honest about that, either," she whispered.

"How many?"

"Twice that."

"You murdered thirty thousand vampires in a single night, and you didn't think that might be a detail I'd want to know before we...?" he mockingly imitated Andrew's gesture.

"They brutally tore apart my lover and my Progeny while they made me watch. I lost it. I just snapped and I started killing and devouring them... I... I didn't mean to do it. I just couldn't stop." Another tear, painfully slow, fell from her face and tracked down her dress. "I had never hurt any of them. He had never hurt any of them. But they tortured and devoured him. We just wanted to be left alone!"

"For one life, you took _thirty thousand_?" he asked.

"For one such life, I would take a million of theirs!" She leaped to her feet, fangs snapping out. "Every one of them that died took glee in ending his life, and they wanted to end mine as well. They mocked and laughed as I wept for him. It was my life or theirs. Any vampire who had the ability to do it would have killed them all. You hate me for what I am, but every one of them would have done the same, for far less reason!"

She flitted out the window, running from the accusation on his face with such speed that it created a sonic boom.


	12. Keklewei

_Sexual content advisory._

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* * *

><p><strong>12. Keklewei<strong>

It was stupid and it took too much power. She couldn't stop and plowed into the side of a mountain. Snow and stone rolled with her and she tumbled down the side of it. The force of her impact released compacted snow and massive boulders. In moments, she was buried and broken as she had been before. But although she was struck by boulders, she was not buried under them, only under the snow.

Her body began the process of healing her immediately, but unfortunately, dawn came. Snow, being ice, did not completely obscure her from the sun. Rays filtered down to where Rhiannon lay still broken. Encased in ice, she burned more slowly, but the damage ate at her through the day, and her body did not heal.

Hours of torture passed, and the snow around her turned red with her blood. The heat of her burning body seared the snow and melted it. She lay in a steaming puddle of blood and water for an hour or two. Then more snow cascaded down on her, a broken, bloody, blackened, hideous thing.

Darkness came, but Rhiannon did not notice. Another day, more snow melted, another avalanche on top of her. She lay in agony, bones sticking through charred flesh.

Distantly, she heard, "Here. She's definitely here somewhere." Andrew's voice faded in and out.

The sound of snuffling, like a dog.

She was lifted and tried to cry out as her broken body was held against something that hurt the burns that covered her tortured frame. Her voice came out strangled and unfamiliar.

"Foolish woman."

The wind burned her, and she wept from the pain of it. The sun's torture had drawn her near death, inexorable and impartial. Now wind swept over her, fire and ice on the unendurable misery of her raw nerves.

The Earth closed around her and she floated in a sea of consuming agony. Day came and she lay in the dirt, sleeping the sleep of the dead. Night came and hunger rose in her like the wings of a crow. She dug for the surface, burrowing in a frenzy.

She rose from the ground, fangs out.

A vampire met her, and so great was her hunger that she had him by the throat before real awareness settled on her.

Beside him was a human whose scent was sweeter than anything she'd ever smelt.

"Eric," she croaked. She let him go. "Andrew." She hungered.

Eric pushed her back. "Run," he commanded.

Andrew turned into an owl and obeyed instantly. Rhiannon's hunger surged and she snarled.

Fighting the ravening starvation that wracked her, she growled, a steady, low, continual growl. "Hungry," she growled, snorting and panting like a living thing.

She sniffed the wind. Humans. Far. She could make it and glut herself before dawn.

She flitted and was slammed against a tree. Eric. She fought the urge to kill him. To slake her hunger on his blood—equal to human blood, if not better, in her starved state. "Let... me... go..." she groaned at him.

"Feed," he told her.

"I'll kill you," she groaned.

"No, you won't. I know you won't."

"You can not know. The hunger burns in me."

His fangs snapped out. "Feed."

Her will had expired. He buried his face in her neck and she buried her teeth in his. With his blood came another hunger and she cried from the heat and the power of it. She felt the flow of his blood slow and pulled away with a colossal effort.

But he was there and beautiful and she was hungry. Too hungry. She ripped at his shirt and he grabbed her hands. "No."

She snarled and pulled free, fingers tangled in his hair as she pulled his head down to kiss him. He shoved her against a tree and held her there by the hands. "We need to talk first, Rhiannon."

She pulled a hand free and pulled him down for another kiss. He growled but gave in, dropping his trousers without further resistance. He cupped her butt in his hands and lifted and she wrapped her legs around him.

He entered her without pause and the bark of the tree she was against chafed at her, an irritant that only distantly registered in a dim corner of her starved mind. This time, they fucked like vampires, fast and hard and rough. This was no give and take, it was all take on each of their parts and neither noticed.

He stepped away from the tree and dropped to his knees, then tumbled them to the snow, still together. She found the rhythm of his thrusts and met it and joined it. Their bodies heated from the friction of their frantic rutting. Feet and fingernails dug into him as she urged him on until she shuddered and cried out—this time not breaking his jaw, though only by force of will—and kissed him fiercely as he growled and thrust into her roughly with his own climax.

He rolled over and pulled out his cell phone. "Service en chambre de trois, s'il vous plaît. Chambre huit zéro neuf... vampire...femelle." He had called for female room service for three vampires at Rhiannon's room. He dressed with vampire speed, then picked her up and flitted to the open window of her hotel room and inside, ignoring Rhiannon's objection that she could flit without his help.

He was there seconds before room service arrived, and he gestured them in. There was much cooing and moaning over him, which irritated Rhiannon, so she leaped on the first one without the courtesy of a glamor.

The girl squealed and struggled, the others staring at the pale, naked, dirt-and-blood-striped wild vampire latched onto her throat and started squealing. Rhiannon jumped on the second one and Eric grabbed the third, glamoring her, before catching the first who tried to escape. He glamored her as well, and then the second as Rhiannon discarded her, still alive and conscious, as well.

He glamored them and ushered them out the door, they back to giggling and fawning on him.

He shut the door and turned back to her. Rhiannon remained squatting, naked and dirty on the sofa. He raised an eyebrow at her. She hissed at him, irritated and emotionally off-balance. "Where is Andrew?"

Eric sighed. He walked over and dragged her to a standing position and then off of the sofa and against his body. "It must be quite the burden," he said, holding her gaze with his own.

"Well, he is a druid-"

"Not that. I meant it must be quite the burden to be the only intelligent or competent person in the whole entire world."

She pulled away but he held her, his arms tightening.

"Andrew can take care of himself. You can feel if he gets into any trouble, and I now have proof that you can get there and create an avalanche before anyone else can even react if necessary. And I have been dealing with the enmity of the Authority for a thousand years before you came along."

"You don't understand just how-"

"Do I not?" he tugged her back as she tried to pull away.

"Keklewei thought he understood the danger, too," Rhiannon answered.

He nuzzled her neck. "For someone so old, you are incredibly vulnerable and fragile," he whispered to her.

She hissed at him. "I most certainly am not."

He sighed. "I know you can snap me like a twig. But you're terrified of losing Andrew. You're terrified of loving anyone at all because they might be killed. A gaggle of silly humans is fawning over me—which they do nonstop, by the way—and you practically revert to your Wild state." He turned her face to his. "When I can't immediately handle finding out that you're a druid or the Immortal, you flee and hide. You _are_ fragile, Rhiannon."

"You don't understand. So much death and horror because I didn't protect-"

He cupped her face with his hands and laid his forehead against hers. "You've carried Keklewei for four thousand years, Rhiannon. Don't you think it's time that you quit using him as a shield against everything good in life? What would he say if he knew he was the reason you deny yourself companionship, Progeny, and the beautiful home and life you dream of?"

He picked her up and carried her into the bathroom, and she didn't fight or answer. The question beggared response, and he didn't seem to expect any.

He turned on the shower and put her in the tub. He undressed and stepped in with her. He picked up the soap and stood between her and the water. Building a lather, he started at her shoulders, his hands slick and hot from the water and the soap.

Slowly, gently, he washed her shoulders. He ran his hand down her arms, then back up before rubbing them with the soap and a washcloth. The soapy cloth ran down her back and around to her ribs. He pulled her back against his chest, his heated hands running across her cooled flesh.

"Eric-"

"Shhh. Be still, Rhiannon."

She could feel his penis on her back, but he did not react to it. His hands were gentle, but almost clinical as he washed her belly, then her breasts. His hand slid lower with the cloth in it, while his other hand pressed wide and flat against her belly. He nudged her legs apart, and in spite of herself, she gasped as the hot cloth slid into the gap. He parted the lips of her labia and cleaned inside, the rough cloth teasing her clitoris.

Once more, he did not press his advantage, but simply moved on. She felt him kneel behind her to continue down her legs. The cloth took away the blood and dried, caked mud. He stood then and started soaping himself.

She grabbed the soap and washcloth from him without meeting his eyes. She already knew his body, every indentation, every curve, every lean line of it. But she never tired of it, and she ignored the water that stung her face as she ran soap and washcloth over his chest and down his belly. She turned him, he obediently facing into the oncoming water, and she washed his back, sliding the washcloth into the cleft of his butt and down.

She cleaned his legs as he had done for her, sliding the cloth down his powerful thighs and along his calves, appreciating the sculpted beauty of his body. Turning him, she cleaned his penis, not as detached as he had been, if she was honest with herself.

She slid the washcloth around the base, behind his scrotum, fighting to ignore the soft, unnecessary intake of his breath that accompanied her touch.

When she was done, he negligently turned the water off and turned to pick her up. The washcloth fell, unnoticed, from her fingers to lay discarded and forlorn in the water at the bottom of the shower.

He laid her on the bed and this time their lovemaking was slow, leisurely, patient. Rhiannon touched his body, kissed his body, and renewed her knowledge of it on every level. He repaid her with a poignant passion that brought bloody tears to her eyes.

With morning only an hour or so off, they lay together, Eric's head resting on Rhiannon's belly.

"You once told me that you had never made a vampire. Why do you refer to Keklewei as your Progeny?" he finally asked her.

Rhiannon sighed. "I'm not sure how it happened. I saved him with my blood, minutes before morning. I dragged him into the ground with me. I didn't know what else to do, there was no time, really. When the next night came, we had the bond as surely as if he had not been a vampire already when I found him. I did not turn him, but... I loved him as if I had. It was a long time before I realized that he felt that bond, as well."

"So he was not like Andrew."

Rhiannon chuckled. "I don't think anyone's like Andrew. Though the pair of you remind me much of each other. He's twenty-four, so he has an excuse, though."

Eric mock-growled at her. "Are you saying I am immature?"

"Childlike," she said. "As opposed to childish."

"A fine distinction," he informed her.

"A precious distinction," she whispered.

They lay quietly for a while. Shifting to pull her against him, with her head on his chest, Eric asked, "Will you tell me about him?"

She curled her fingers on his chest, then let them have their way; they followed the curves of his muscles as her mind traveled to the distant past.

"I met him in on a plain of yellow flowers. He was staked out to wait for the sun. He had been drained by other vampires, because he had removed several children from their... grasp. I hesitate to call it 'care', as they were obviously using them for food and other unpleasant purposes. He returned them to their families, but I fear their fates had already been sealed.

"Keklewei fought when the vampires came to kill the families of the children. The villagers, afraid for their own lives, set on him with silver beads. The vampires killed them anyway." Her finger followed the line between his muscles that ran straight down his belly.

"When I found him, he was bound with silver, lying in the field, all of his blood stolen. I gave him of my own and dragged him into the ground. I held him as the blood coursed through him, for he grew drunk with it and tried to climb out. Our struggle tore the ground, until night came and I released him.

"He wanted to go and exact revenge upon them for the deaths of the families and the children. I was a fool. I would not let him do it. I did not know so at the time, but it was this which caused them to hunt me. I had saved him, and that alone was their justification for pursuit.

"It meant nothing that I had saved them. They had sentenced him to death for his crime of disagreeing, and they were intent upon exacting it. I let him go when he promised not to go to them. I followed him for months, until at last he came to me and asked that I cease pursuing him and join him instead.

"I did so, and we grew fond of each other. I admitted that I felt the bond for him, and he told me that he had known it from the moment he left the ground that first night.

"We loved each other. We lived in harmony with one another and even the villages around us for a hundred years.

"But the nest of his Maker did not give up. They bided their time, that hundred years, until we grew complacent. Then they gathered together all of the vampires from both continents. Some even came from as far away as what we now call Europe.

"Vampire numbers were low then, because the food supply was limited if one wanted to consume them til they died. Vampires were not allowed to create Progeny until they were five hundred years old... and five hundred years was required between new Progeny.

"It was the largest gathering of vampires to that date. They came in such forces because they suspected who I was. They wanted to be there to see my suffering. It was a great night of sport for them.

"I didn't fight. I took the silver without complaint, because they promised that if I went with them, they would not harm Keklewei. I believed them." Her fingers curled into a fist as pain assaulted her heart. "I protested nothing. Keklewei was bound in silver at my feet. When I demanded that they release him for the onset of dawn, they laughed and agreed.

"The moment he was unbound, they tore him apart." She hesitated, drawing the strength to continue.

"I had done nothing. In my foolish faith that there was 'honor amongst vampires', I did nothing to save him. In that fatal moment, I was silvered and did not react quickly enough to save him. If I had acted sooner, if I had shown them even one degree of my power, Keklewei would be alive with me today.

"But I did nothing until it was too late. Then I turned on them and I savaged them like the rabid dogs they were. I gave them time to run, but they thought that their numbers could overcome me. The more they attacked me, the more savage I became until I had descended into the madness of the Wilds.

"I loved him, but I did nothing to save him. I still, after all that time, did not understand that there is only one language vampires understand—power. I did not show them power and they paid for it. A third of the vampire population of the world died that night because I was negligent. I had the faith of a little child, not a fourteen thousand year old vampire.

"For my failure, Keklewei paid. For my failure, thirty thousand vampires paid. I wanted to meet the sun after that. Everything I loved dead and gone. So much blood on my hands. But the druid princess within me pleaded for life. Two thousand, five hundred years later, she was the last of her kind.

"Until Andrew, I thought that she lived on in vain. The remnant of an extinct breed. Now, I do not know. Keklewei believed that the druid part of me was what kept the vampire part at bay enough that I was not the hideous, murderous monster that so many of them become in their madness.

"But I am no different from them. They kill their thirty thousand over years, I did it all at once."

She rolled over and looked at the ceiling.

Then she smiled at Eric and put her hand on his cheek. "You make me less tired of life."

He grinned slightly, raising an eyebrow. "A ringing endorsement if ever there has been one."


	13. Inevitable Clash

**13. Inevitable Clash**

The next night, Rhiannon woke surrounded by Eric. By his smell and by his arms.

She rolled over to look at him, meeting his eyes and smiling.

"I have a million questions now that I know who you are, you know," he said later after they had kissed and greeted each other.

"I may even answer some of them," she replied, stretching. "What is your most pressing question?"

"The fifty-seven-"

"It was sixty-four."

"Okay. The sixty-four. What happened there?"

"Ah. The Authority was in its infancy. They decided that they would kill me to improve their reputation. Like the current Authority, though, they didn't believe I really was the Immortal, or Rhiannon. They thought I simply fit the description. They took me captive to kill me in front of a number of Sheriffs and Monarchs."

"So rather than die, you killed them?"

"Not precisely, no. I actually did it to protect the other vampire they'd taken prisoner. He was young and quite afraid. He had made a Progeny without permission. I did not feel that merited the True Death. So I glamored the human archers they had in the room to protect themselves, and they killed the majority of the vampires."

He looked at her in surprise. "But the legends say you killed them with your bare hands."

"Legends say what you make them say, Eric. Rarely are they the full, or real truth. A grateful man will tell the tale you ask of him. Besides, which is the murderer; the gun or the one who pulls its trigger?" She looked at him thoughtfully. "The appearance of a thing is as important as the reality of the thing."

"Like turning into a bat when you really can't?"

She smiled. "Illusions. Smoke and mirrors. Just as terrifying as the real thing when there are legends to back them up."

"You didn't actually kill them. Humans did."

"Are humans responsible for what they do when they are glamored? Or do they do the will of the vampire who glamored them? When you forgot me, was it your will to do so, or was it my will imposed upon yours? Who has responsibility for your forgetting?"

"Yet in the vampire world, any human who killed a vampire would be killed even if glamored."

"Yes. We vampires are a strange sort, aren't we."

"Where are you going?"

"I am going to be seen. By as much of the city as possible."

"That's a switch. You're going from hiding to being seen?"

"I will not allow the Authority to silence my actions or write them off as 'part of the act'. The city, particularly the vampire world, must hum with word of my presence."

She pulled another of the ubiquitous white dresses from her pack. Slipping it over her head, she focused her will. When her hair was long enough again from having burnt in her own fire, she sat down to brush it. "Can you open the window please? I have summoned Andrew."

He did, then came to stand over her, looking down at her. "Appearance of power? So you will do what, fly around the city?"

"I will ride through it on a white steed." She looked over to the window as a regular brown barn owl fluttered through it. "And there's my white steed now."

"Don't do this," Eric told her.

"Eric, it's okay. Really. Everything's going to be okay."

"Do you understand that your legend can work against you?" He knelt at her side. "The more dangerous they think you are, the more they'll bring against you. More silver, more guns, more everything."

"They won't stop unless they are too afraid to try, they are dead, or I am dead. Terrifying them is the only chance we have unless you wish me to kill them."

"Go back underground, Rhiannon. You've survived that way this long. You think you're doing this for all the right reasons, but-"

"Eric, they won't let me go back to ground now. They have to believe that I am unstoppable or dead."

"Rhiannon! What will happen to Andrew if they catch you? What will they do to him because he aided you in this mad crusade of yours?" Eric shook her.

Rhiannon caught his face in hers. "Trust me, Eric. Please? I'm doing this for you, and for him."

"I'm asking you not to do it."

She considered it. She considered it because it was Eric and because it was clear that he feared for her. But he knew what they did not, that her 'power' was mostly pretense... though not entirely. The worried look on his face stirred something warm and forgotten inside of her.

"Eric, I need to do this. I don't want to hide forever. Weren't you the one that mentioned having the home I dream of? I can't do that with them trying to kill me. Please understand." She kissed him on the forehead.

He leaned forward, keeling at her feet and burying his head against her belly. He put his arms around her and she held him. He looked up at her with open appeal in his blue-green eyes.

"I will be back, Eric."

She left the room a while later with Andrew. The up side to Andrew's ability was that he could turn quickly and into anything he could imagine from nature provided he had with him a totem of that creature. The downside was that the spell didn't last long before it had to be refreshed or exchanged—or it would be gone. So the duration of their 'show' would have to be short, especially since it was night time.

At last, she laid out her plan. They would begin in an alley and canter down the street. Near the end of it, she would levitate, holding him with her legs. He would appear to run into the sky. When his spell had to be refreshed, instead of that, he would alter into a black bat and she would flit away so that horse and rider would appear to vanish.

Rhiannon mounted and Andrew started out at a trot. Then his speed picked up as he rounded the corner onto the street, directly into a large crowd of people...

Rhiannon immediately lifted him, but found that it wasn't as simple as she had thought. Both holding him with her legs, while appearing to ride, and trying to levitate at the same time had him dipping too low and knocking a fetlock against the roof of a car. He whinnied a pained protest.

Which had the effect of silencing the street as people turned to stare. A taxi crashed into the car ahead of it. Rhiannon and Andrew galloped across the roof of a car before she managed to get him lifted into the air. He flailed, trying to hold his rhythm in midair.

At last, he was in the air, seeming to carry her while he dangled crazily.

Then the human factor entered in. Guns barked with blazing fire, and Rhiannon felt one hit Andrew. "Switch!" she cried.

When Andrew switched to a black bat, she grasped him out of the air and tucked him behind her. She flitted away with him to the hotel room. She dropped Andrew off and returned within seconds to take the guns from the police who had opened fire on her.

She bent the guns and dropped them, hissing.

"I offered you no harm, and you tried to kill me," she growled in French. "Remember this day, for today, Rhiannon gave you your impertinent lives." Stretching her arms out, she rose into the sky. To the staring, shocked people around her, she cried, "N'oubliez pas la miséricorde J'ai montré aujourd'hui!" or, "Remember the mercy I have shown today!"

She returned to the hotel room. Andrew was sprawled on the sofa.

"Where are you injured?" she demanded.

He groaned. "Tore through my stomach. Didn't translate well across to the bat and back to human."

She yanked his shirt up. The hole was huge. She realized that the slug had torn only a small hole, but when he turned into a bat, it had become a huge one. When changing back to human, the damage had grown with the size alteration from bat to human. She wished it had worked the other way, getting smaller when he altered to a bat, but the bullet had probably still been in there.

She opened her wrist and held it out to him.

He pulled a pained, disgusted face. "I'll heal it myself. Just give me a minute."

"You'll bleed out. My blood will heal you."

"No," he glared at her. "I'm not going to drink that. You smell like a musty old mildewed library or something."

"What about Eric?" Rhiannon asked.

"He smells worse. He smells like carrion."

Eric made a rude noise.

Rhiannon pinched the bridge of her nose. "You can't stay like that."

Andrew grumbled. "I told you, give me a minute."

Rhiannon looked over at Eric, waiting for him to say something about her lack of foresight regarding the police guns. He said nothing, standing still with his hands in his pockets and staring at Andrew.

She walked over to him, "He'll be okay," she whispered. "He can heal himself."

Eric dragged her against him and wrapped his arms around her. "You are going to get yourself killed."

"I will not. I will not make the same mistake next time."

"You're doing it again? You've managed to get a hole blown in Andrew's gut. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose here? He's not a vampire. He isn't going to heal from it like we would-"

"No," Rhiannon pulled away. "He's not a vampire. But at least he is supporting what I am trying to do and understands the importance of it-"

"Actually, I just thought it would be fun-"

"Shut up, Andrew," Rhiannon and Eric both told him, almost in unison.

Eric ran his knuckles down her cheek, a gentle, sweet touch. "I support you, Rhiannon, but not what you're doing. I'm going to Shreveport. You know where to find me. I'll leave the windows open at night."

"Eric-"

"I have duties, Rhiannon. I can't stay here while you play games with the Authority and your and Andrew's lives."

"Eric, I have to protect you both. There is no risk too great to protect others. Would you walk away from Pam if she was endangered?"

"It isn't the same!"

"Eric, please. It's only a question of you giving me time to finish this. Another year and we'll be-"

"A year?" he asked, his face horrified. "You're going to do this for a year?"

"Not this, just-"

He shook his head. "I can't go along with these hare-brained schemes, Rhiannon. You're going to get yourself killed."

Andrew started laughing, then coughed in pain. "Can I have my pack please?" he asked. "He's too much like you," he told Rhiannon when she handed it to him. "You both think you know what's best for everybody else."

Rhiannon scowled at him. "Just shut up, Andrew. Nobody asked you."

"You should tell him."

"He's leaving, he doesn't care to know. He thinks I'm going to fail." She walked in the other room and heard Eric demanding that Andrew tell him. When he threatened Andrew, Rhiannon flitted back into the room and hissed at him.

"Tell me what your plan is, Rhiannon," he said, hissing back.

"Stay here and help me," she answered, glaring.

"No-" he began.

"Then no!" she snarled. "Go away."

Eric looked at Andrew, "If she dies, don't ever come to Louisiana. Ever again. I'll kill you on sight."

"But-" Andrew began, apparently ready to plea that it wasn't his fault.

"Ever." Eric looked at Rhiannon. "Your fear will be the end of you."

"Damn it, Eric!" But he was gone and Rhiannon's shoulders slumped.

"It's your fault. You should have told him everything."

She hissed at him. "Shut your mouth before I kill you anyway," she snarled, meaning despite him being a druid and a friend.

He shrugged negligently, pulling herbs out of his pack. "You can't pull off your grand scheme without me. It's the only reason you put up with me at all."

She blinked at him in surprise, her fangs snapping back in. "You don't really believe that?"

"Of course I do. I figured it out a few days ago. I'm a little slow, but not completely stupid."

"But that's not true," she told him.

"Okay," he said, but he didn't sound as much convinced as patronizing. "If you loved him, you'd have told him."

"What do you know of love? You're an infant and you've never even had a girlfriend."

"Love is evidence of itself, Rhiannon. You complicate everything, but in the end, if even an 'infant' like me can recognize love, then you have no excuse." He closed his eyes and focused. The herbs in his hand glowed and he placed them on his gaping wound. "Let me rest so I can heal." He closed his eyes again and turned resolutely away.

Rhiannon walked into the other room and considered for hours. Finally, just before morning, she sat down and wrote Eric a letter. She had heard him speak Old Swedish, so she wrote it in that language. She had to be certain that, if the letter was opened, no one would know what it said except Eric.

Walking to the front desk, she asked that the letter be mailed. The clerk kindly accepted it with reassurances that it would go out that very day.

Rhiannon returned to her room for the day.

Below, the clerk turned to the next people in line, who asked for a room. Her sleeve brushed across the letter, and it slowly floated to the ground. Her foot bumped it and it scooted under the concierge desk to lay forgotten amidst gum wrappers, popsicle sticks, and dust.


	14. The Price of Love

**14. The Price of Love**

This time, Rhiannon and Andrew practiced for a week before she walked down the street and a white bull trotted up to her and followed her into an alley before they both vanished. Then she descended from a skyscraper, followed by a white owl.

The third week, she handed Andrew the crossbow for their next demonstration.

"Don't make me do this," Andrew pleaded.

"You must," Rhiannon told him.

"You said yourself that it's unlikely that it will work. The Authority may not hunt me, but Eric will torture me for eternity."

"Eric won't bother you. He hasn't contacted me, he doesn't care. He probably won't even know I'm gone unless he hears it through a rumor."

She patted him on the cheek, fighting the agony rushing through her heart, "It has to be this way, Andrew. It has to be. You have to be pinpoint accurate. You've practiced enough that you will do it. You have to time it right, though. Even I can only take so much silver before the pain is more than I can bear."

"You can't even be sure that they'll be there," he answered.

"They'll be there." Her voice was translucent with resignation. "We've done it in the same place, on the same night every week. It's predictable so that they'll take the bait. They're too desperate and too arrogant not to." She took one of those very human, very reassuring deep breaths, "Promise me that you'll bury my remains before sunup."

"I've found the right place," he answered. A tear slipped down his face. "I don't want to be alone."

She knelt at his feet as he sat on the sofa, and took his hands in hers. "Andrew, I want you to understand something. I cared about you from the moment I met you. When you became my Progeny, I was proud of you. You worked so hard to learn what you had to. I could never have imagined that anyone could learn what you did in only a year."

She wiped a tear from his face. "You are brilliant. You are wonderful. Some woman is going to see that, I promise you. Tomorrow night, you'll be on your own. If I didn't feel complete confidence that you could make it, I wouldn't do this. I am old and tired and the world has been cruel to me for a very long time. If I could just forget, I would. If I could just go somewhere and start over, I would. Time and again they have come for me." She lifted his chin so that he looked into her eyes. "I don't want to do this anymore. I can't watch someone else I love die at the hands of the Authority. I don't have the strength left for it."

"Okay," he said, weakly. "I hate it, but okay."

They clung to each other and cried.

Rhiannon had not fed, and she did not meditate that day.

When the sun set and she rose from the black bed with its red satin sheets, she walked into the other room and saw Andrew with the crossbow.

He stood up, tears on his face. She said nothing, and he said nothing. She kissed him on the cheek and whispered, "When your time is done, I will see you on the other side."

"Thank you for everything," he whispered back, his voice breaking.

They embraced and cried together.

"I'm sorry, Andrew. I'm so sorry. I wish I could have been a better Maker. I'm sorry that I did not show you that I love you."

"It's enough that you've said it now," he answered, wiping his tears and stepping back.

"I am proud of you, my Son," she told him, looking into his eyes. "Do not cry for me. This is my choice. Honor that and know that we'll be together again in time."

"You don't know that," he said, choking back a sob.

"No matter what happens, Andrew, I believe that I have a soul. We'll be together again, someday, somehow."

"And Eric?"

"I wrote to him. He did not reply. If he even read it, he did not care to answer."

"I'm sorry," Andrew said, kissing her on the cheek.

"So am I." She turned from the window and looked back. "Good-bye, Andrew."

Rhiannon turned back out the window, steeling herself for what was to come. The price of peace was so very, very high. The cost of protecting her loved ones was more than she could bear, if she thought of it a moment longer.

She flitted out the window and across the street to the skyscraper there. Dropping off of it, she slowly drifted down toward the people assembled below. They had come to see her appear again: Rhiannon of Legend, the Immortal, the Druid Princess who carried death with her.

She drifted lower and lower, until they could see her and began pointing her out.

The police opened fire, as she had known they would. Their silver bullets pierced her, and she gritted her teeth. At last, she shrieked as the pain became too intense to bear. Moments ticked by as more struck her, screaming across agonized nerves.

A single black arrow flew from a window of the Hôtel du Réglage Sun. Rhiannon of Legend, the Immortal, the Druid Princess, exploded into bloody rain.

A black bat swooped, grasping an arrow and the bit of detritus that stuck to it. Changing into a white dove, the druid flapped away into the night.

Some stories arose that very night, claiming that she didn't really die, but turned into a dove, and that she might one day be seen again. Most scoffed at the claim, they had seen her explode. But some looked around themselves and shivered.


	15. Grave Matters

**15. Grave Matters**

Andrew buried her heart in a mountain meadow. Every month on the day before the full moon, he kept an ancient ritual, older than the histories of man, and brought flowers to her grave site. Sitting in the sun, he sat a day-long vigil. When night came, he turned and left, walking from the meadow and back down to the village where he now lived.

He considered writing to Eric himself, but realized that there was doubtless no use in doing so.

The legends of Rhiannon's death grew with each passing month, and Andrew tried to avoid listening. But even the human community was abuzz with it, and Andrew ached with a profound sense of loss.

Some days, he went to sit at her grave and speak to her. He imagined he could hear her voice on the wind, encouraging him to learn and grow as a Druid. So by the third month, he took to going every day. He took a book about herbs, and in the spring of the first year, he grew a garden there beside her grave site.

He couldn't let her go.

He spent his days, even in the winter, near the grave, until at last he bought the meadow with some of the million dollars she had given him and built a cabin there. It was morbid, he knew, but somehow reassuring.

Like the legends of Rhiannon, his devotion to his Maker would not die. He promised her grave that he would learn all he could, and teach his children if they had the ability. She gave no answer. He asked if she thought he should go see Eric. Only silence greeted the question.

He went back into his cabin to sleep after the day long vigil in the eighth month. He was awakened by a knock at the door.

When he opened it, he found Eric there. "Let me in," the vampire demanded.

Andrew refused.

For two months, Eric waited for him to come out at night. Andrew refused. They argued. Eric raged.

"Come back in two months," Andrew begged him. "She's not dead, you'll see!"

But Eric didn't come, and Rhiannon didn't rise.

Andrew sat at her grave and wept. She was wrong, her heart was not enough. He laid on her grave and told her so.

The trees told him to be patient. The ground told him to wait.

Andrew gave up. "Wait, be patient," was all the trees and the Earth ever said, about anything.

He continued to make leather as animals came to him to pass to the next world. He continued to learn what it meant to be a druid. In the sixth month, he finally learned what Rhiannon could not teach him: He bridled the power of the sun on the day before the full moon. The flowers he planted at Rhiannon's grave grew roots and bloomed on their own.

Winter came and the flowers bloomed still.

But on the first day of the twelfth month, they died abruptly. The grass over the grave withered and died.

Andrew grew them back. They died again. Each morning, Andrew awakened to the blackened, withered flowers and dead gray grass. Without regard for the season, he called on the power of the sun, and restored them to life.

Every night for the next year, they died again.

Andrew could not let go. The drive to keep her grave untainted had held him there. One morning, he realized he couldn't do it anymore. He laid there on her grave and cried. His failure ached in him, and he packed that night to leave.

The next morning, animals lay on the desecrated grave with its blackened flowers and wilted grass.

"I can't do it anymore," he told them. "She was wrong. It's all over."

There was no censure in their eyes; they stared at him in expressionless silence. Over two years had passed and his magic had failed him repeatedly for nearly the whole third one. It was time for him to let go.

He left. He returned that month to place flowers at her grave, but did not stay the day. He returned the next month also, but did not stay. Then he came no longer, because the grass was growing again and the flowers that had taken root had spread. The herb garden had spread, as well, until there was nothing left to show where her grave was except the small headstone, and it was overgrown.

He had an argument with the beautiful French woman he had met when he decided to come for the twelfth month of the third year. She left him for it, saying he was crazy. So he sat at Rhiannon's grave and mourned the loss of the woman he'd lost, and the Maker he'd killed.

"I know you couldn't have stopped her."

Andrew looked up. It was Eric. He stood still, hands in his pockets.

"What you don't know, is that I killed her myself. I shot her in the heart with an arrow." It no longer mattered to him that Eric would kill him for it. And doubtless, that must be why he had come.

"Three years is a long time for human loyalty, Andrew."

"I've only come back to say good-bye," he told Eric. "I will never forgive myself, though."

"Not even a vampire can come back from an arrow to the heart, Andrew."

"It was fiberglass, not wood. She was certain that the silver would make it look like she had died, but that the Earth would restore her from her heart."

"She was wrong. But I admire your courage and your devotion and faith in her."

Andrew stood up and dusted himself off. "Her grave has recovered. There's nothing left for me to do here." He stuffed his own hands into the pockets of his leather breeches. "I'm sorry, for what it's worth. I know you loved her."

"I still do, Andrew, just like you. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here three years later any more than you would. But it's time to let her go."

If he had looked, Andrew would have seen tears falling from Eric's eyes. But he didn't, because he didn't want the vampire to see the tears in his own.

Eric left, but Andrew sat the vigil he had started that morning, until the first light of dawn appeared over the mountains.

He knelt and placed his hand on her grave as leaves rustled around him in the cold Autumn wind that made the glass beads hanging from his leather jacket tinkle quietly. He looked up a the peaks of the Alps above him and remembered the day, seeming so long ago, that he had followed the weak thread of her life to find her and save her.

There was a history here that no one else would ever know. The sacrifice and love of an ancient creature thought to be the most evil that ever existed, would be forgotten as the world moved on.

He lifted his arms to the sky and embraced the heat of the sun. Then he filled the small clearing with the bright orange-yellow flowers of jewelweed so that the hummingbird hawk-moths and the bees would come to this quiet, sheltered spot.

Then he turned back and went home to America. He did not return to Shreveport, doubting that Eric wanted to be reminded of his loss any more than Andrew wanted to be reminded by Eric of his own. Rhiannon had been more of a mother to him than the cold, unfeeling woman who had given birth to him.

He took a seed from his pocket and placed it beside the grave marker. Drawing once more on the power of the sun, he exhausted himself growing it until the cherry tree stood tall, flowered, and then at last bore fruit.

He left it there with sweet cherries hanging from the branches, the scent of its blossoms still clinging to the air.


	16. Possibilities

**16. Possibilities**

Eric was bored.

The march of life was always the same. Even the trouble that seemed to follow Sookie had found other pastures, after she had returned from wherever she had been. He had avoided her, though she sometimes came into Fangtasia. She and Bill still argued and fought constantly.

But he had no heart to speak with her. For some time, he had been enamored with her, and he had felt a desire to preserve the beauty and uniqueness of her faerie heritage. But even that seemed pointless. He felt that he should find Andrew, for he was the only one of his kind. He should watch over his lover's Progeny.

But he did not. Instead, he sat in Fangtasia and listened to the petty squabbling of vampires whose infantile disputes could only be settled by the Sheriff. He hadn't realized before just how petty it all was. The struggles for power, the scrabbling for wealth. Rhiannon had shown him both that Power was imaginary and that wealth meant nothing if you were truly dead.

And if she could not protect herself, then how could he protect anyone at all?

Disinterested, he turned his gaze on yet another petitioner for his attention. His gaze arrested. She looked hauntingly like Rhiannon, despite the dark roots and dark eyebrows that gave the lie to her white-blond hair. He took her downstairs, but she was too hot, too loud, too inexperienced, too fragile.

He cast her away after feeding on her, irritated and unhappy. She swore at him and huffed out. He ignored it, knowing she was simply struggling for what little dignity she could scrape up.

The next night, he sat in his chair and did mostly the same thing again.

"Really, Eric, you've become very boring," Pam lectured him. "You could at least pretend to be Sheriff for a while now and then. You just told Mark to eat his human, and then Trish couldn't have stolen him."

"It's very good advice," Eric told her. "Do you think I should have offered to eat him, instead?"

"Not funny, Eric."

Then, "Oh fuck, what's _he_ doing here?" Pam straightened up. "I thought you told him to never come here or you would kill him. I suppose I'll end up cleaning up again." She huffed dramatically.

Eric looked up to see Andrew brushing rain off of his leather jacket. He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. It wasn't his fault." And, at least it wasn't boring.

Andrew approached, speaking to the vampire guard who asked if he could approach, whose fangs snapped out as he said, "He smells good."

Of course he smelled good, but his blood was poison. Eric flicked his fingers, and Andrew stepped forward. Beside him came a slender, willowy girl who smelled of druid, as well. Her brown hair was too short for Eric's taste and she seemed almost diffident. Eric supposed it was only a matter of time before Andrew had learned how to create more of his kind.

It was, after all, one of the reasons vampires hated Druids so much... they were prolific breeders and creators.

"I told you never to come here," Eric snapped his fangs out. He did not want the reminder.

"But-"

"No 'buts', Andrew."

Andrew's eyebrows drew together and he scowled. "Eric, look," he said, pointing at the girl beside him. At Eric's lifted eyebrow, he said, "Look closer."

Eric looked at the girl, and found his eyes meeting clear blue eyes the color of magnificent photos of perfect mountain lakes. Familiar eyes that held no hint of recognition at all.

He led the pair into his office, almost trembling at the insult.

"You created a druid that looks like Rhiannon? Why?" He sat down with an effort and leaned back. "You got the hair color wrong." He glared furiously at the impertinent Andrew, who would already be dead were it not for the AVL.

"Eric. Look at her."

Eric shrugged. "Whatever you are trying to tell me, I am not getting it. That, by the way, is irritating."

"It's her, Eric. I dyed her hair in case someone recognized her."

"That's impossible, Andrew. Where did you find her, anyway?"

"I found her at my cabin, wearing the leathers I left behind."

"And she claimed to be Rhiannon, so you just took that at face value?"

"No, Eric. This is Rhiannon. She didn't claim anything. She doesn't remember anything. She's barely learned how to talk again."

Eric crossed his arms and raised his eyebrow.

"Her heart survived, Eric. Her brain didn't. She doesn't have the knowledge or memories, but she knew me. And she knew where to find you, too." At Eric's skeptical look, Andrew sighed. "I didn't bring her here, Eric. And she didn't know where she was going, only kept saying she had to go... I followed her here, not the other way around."

Eric stood up, walking up to her. Looking at her, he told Andrew, "Her heart beats. She breathes. She lives. Five years later, and you bring to me a living human druid and tell me she is Rhiannon? Can you not let go?" He scoffed.

He tilted her face up to his, meeting eyes that were so exactly like Rhiannon's that his heart screamed with pain and sorrow. A cruel, cruel game.

"And who are you?" he asked her.

"Ray-in," she replied, uncertain.

He snorted. "And do you know who I am?"

"Min älskade," she whispered softly.

"No," Eric denied it. It was a dream. A hoax. She was alive—really alive? It wasn't possible. Even if she managed to survive, she should have been a vampire.

She looked at him with quiet, serene eyes, open and warm and without guile.

"What did she say?" Andrew asked. "She said something real, didn't she?"

As his voice broke into Eric's confusion, a dam broke around his heart. He pulled her against him and she smelled so very human and so very sweet—like cherry blossoms. The thunder of her heartbeat was sweet music to his ears.

He smoothed the nut-brown hair back and saw tell-tale signs of white roots... the perfect contrast to the human of the night before who tried to be blond when she was brown-haired. He looked into eyes that had haunted him for five years.

Then he kissed her with all of his dead heart. Kissing her, he almost felt alive. He lifted his head and answered Andrew, "She said, 'My beloved' in Swedish." He held her, not even noticing as Andrew walked out and left them alone.

Fourteen months later, the Hôtel du Réglage Sun refurbished their foyer and found an unmailed letter. Ever dutiful, the concierge mailed it, remarking on the shoddy work of whomever had dropped it, unaware that it had been she, herself, who had done so, many years before.

At Eric Northman's massive new estate outside Bon Temps, now adorned with a castle literally brought over stone by stone from Switzerland, the letter was delivered after a forward from the old apartment.

Eric woke to find Rhain, as she was now known, curled up beside him. She had clearly been watching him sleep, and her eyes sparkled with that strange delight that so often characterized her. Eric did not miss the haunted sorrow that had always shadowed her eyes before.

"You got a letter, love," she told him.

He took it, and, finding no return address, opened it curiously. He stared at it in surprise.

"What's wrong?"

"It's from you. Years ago. Before you died."

"Ah, what does it say?"

"It's in Swedish," he answered.

"Read it," she demanded curiously. "Well, translate it. I don't understand a word of it."

He took a deep breath, as she had used to do.

"My Beloved,

"Please do not be angry. I know that what I am doing is risky, but please know that I am doing it out of love for you. I ask you to trust me one last time, and then I swear to you that I will live with you in any way that you desire.

"I will fake my own death, with Andrew's help. As I love you, I also love him. Both of you are far more dear to me than my own life. I may fail, as you warned me. If I do fail, please remember always that I did it because I can not bear to see you harmed for my sake.

"I know that you would have gone to ground with me forever if it was necessary. But I cannot bear to see you do it. I am selfish; I can not stand the pain of losing you slowly over the years as you realize that I was not worth the loss of your freedom, any more than I can stand the pain of seeing you harmed.

"It will be a year that I will be in the ground, if this works. It will take that long for me to be rebuilt by the Earth. I beg you, please, do not stop loving me in so short a time. A year is as nothing for you and I, when we have a future of centuries to obtain from the waiting of it.

"My Beloved Eric, I will return to you when I can, I swear it to you. If I die, I will come as a ghost to love you in the day while you sleep. If I rise, I will cross oceans and continents to be with you again. I promise you that nothing shall keep me from your side.

"One year, Beloved. Just a year. I beg you, please.

"I love you,

"Rhiannon."

Eric laid the letter down, trying to hold in his sorrow and loss. Five long years. Even if he tried to tell her he was sorry for leaving her, for not believing in her, it would mean nothing to her now.

"Honey?" she said softly.

He laid his head on her belly, listening to the sound of her living body, so different from before, while it was so perfectly the same in some ways. "I am sorry. I regret some of what happened in that time."

"I was never angry at you, Eric."

He sighed. "You don't remember. It's okay, it's over."

She ran her hand through his hair and he closed his eyes, tears slipping past his defenses at the gentle touch.

"I remember more every day, Eric. I remember mostly feelings, and I sometimes felt irritation towards you. Even hurt. But I was not angry. I sometimes wonder how I managed to be so even-tempered, as you and I both know I'm not so much so anymore."

He smiled and nestled deeper into her arms. "Actually, you are surprisingly very like you were before. If I could not hear your heartbeat, and did not see you eating food, I don't think I'd ever know. I do envy you, though. You can walk in the sun now."

"Eric?" she sounded unsure, concerned.

"Yes?"

"My memories aren't the only thing coming back."

He looked up at her, turning to gaze up at her without lifting his head from its comfortable spot on her belly. "What do you mean?"

"I think I'm reverting. Slowly, but surely. As the memories seep back, so do certain cravings and desires creep in. I also picked up a box that I should not have been able to handle today—as if it were a feather."

"I don't know what to say," he answered honestly. He wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing to her. Or to him, either, if he had to be honest about it.

"I've been thinking."

"Should I be scared?"

She smiled, slightly, wryly. He laid his head back on her belly, wrapping his arm around her.

"I want to do IVF and have a baby while I still can. In fact, I'd like to have two."

Something strange, alien, unendurable rose in Eric. "You want to have another man's baby?"

Her hand stilled on his head. "I'm so sorry, Eric. I didn't think of it that way. You're right, of course. It was a foolish idea."

The idea had been planted, though. The notion was there. The thought, the curiosity, the possibility... it touched something inside him. Two weeks later as they were driving to Fangtasia, he turned to her and said, "You were right. We should do it."

"What?"

"Babies. Your own babies, while you're human. If there were any way I could father them, I would but-"

She looked away with a guilty expression.

He pulled the Competizione over.

"Rhain?" he demanded.

She shook her head. "No, Eric."

"You're right, you really are reverting, aren't you." He gave her a hard look. "You have an idea, but it's dangerous, so you'd rather give up what you want than even tell me about it because you think that you're the only person allowed to take risks for the one you love. You haven't changed a bit, not really."

She glared at him. He stared back. She looked away first.

"I can make you human. For a single cycle—one day, minus an hour. But only once, and if I miscalculate, you'll die instead. And you can never do it again. Ever. Under no circumstances, because a second dose would kill you instantly."

"Tell me."

"My blood is poison for you. But a drop of it—exactly measured—in an exactly measured potion, with the right spell... and you can be human for a single twenty-three hour period. But that one dose has to be perfect, and once you have ingested my blood that way, it will never go away. You'll die if you take another dose."

"So we would have to time it perfectly," he answered.

"No. Eric, no. Do you think I could live with myself if I killed you?" she demanded.

"It's my right to choose, Rhain," he told her. "How will we know if the time is right for it?"

She looked away again.

"You've thought about it. You have it figured out, don't you?" He leaned over and nibbled at her neck.

"Eric!" she objected.

He slid a hand across her belly and up her shirt to a breast.

She huffed, but there was little sincerity in it.

"Tell me."

She sighed as he transferred his hand to the other breast. He teased her a moment longer, looking into her heated, sexy eyes.

"Tell me."

She growled at him, then sighed and gave in. "If we stick with IVF, we have a really high likelihood of having two babies, plus you could just..." she made a crude gesture with her hand, "...into a cup. That way, there's no opportunity for missing my fertile day in the cycle."

"You weren't going to tell me this? You have it all planned out, all thought out, but you weren't going to tell me?"

"One miscalculation, Eric. That's how close to death you are if you take that potion. A single missed measurement... and I don't even know for sure that it would work." She looked away. "And our children will have vampires for parents, remember."

"All of their friends will be so jealous," he smirked at her.

"A thousand years old, and you are irrepressible. That's pretty impressive, you know."

"What else, Rhain?" He could tell from the way she was wringing her hands in her lap that there was an issue beyond what they'd discussed.

She sighed heavily. "I don't mean to whittle this down to sound like farming or clinical discussion, but... Andrew's a created druid, not a born druid. I don't think that he will breed true. If I don't take this single opportunity while I can, then he may be the last. I do not think that my druid nature will survive another takeover by the vampire... and the vampire is far stronger."

"It seems like a bit of a no-brainer to me."

She shook her head. "It's not fair that you should have to risk absolutely everything, and still maybe have nothing to show for it."

"Rhain, it's my risk to take. You, and the world, really can't afford for you to not at least try to have children. So the only choice left is whether or not I take the risk to be the father. And I'm just selfish enough to demand the right to take that risk." He put the car in gear and pulled back out onto the road. "You are not my vampire monarch. You rule my heart, Rhain, not my life."

Her fingers, warm and slender, curled around his hand, and he heard her sniffle.

"No, don't do that. Don't cry. I do not like it when you cry. I do not enjoy situations in which I do not know what to do."

She held his hand to her lips and sniffled, clinging to him.

"I am afraid," she murmured softly. "I do not want to lose you."

"Well, then, pay attention when you're making that potion then." He grinned and raised an eyebrow at her.

She smiled weakly through her tears and he pulled into the parking lot of Fangtasia.


	17. A Day Off

**17. A Day Off**

Eric looked up as Rhain brought Andrew back into the parlor. She had called him to help her with the potion. Eric didn't like the idea of potions, and he was having serious misgivings.

He sat leaning back against the sofa, not rising as Andrew walked in. The other man greeted him mildly and turned to Rhain.

"How did you learn this spell, anyway?" he continued the conversation that had obviously begun when she'd answered the door to admit him to the house.

"Every druid creates a new spell. Many of them are small things. How to heal a bite or even how to levitate a fallen log off of someone. Usually they are spells created out of need, and the druid always knows the time in his or her life when they are to create the new spell. It seems that my spell contribution to the world is going to be relatively useless beyond its first and only use. Such is life, I suppose."

"I dunno, the continuation of the species is kind of important," Andrew chuckled at her.

"The continuation of the species could be done another way," she replied. "And the spell and measurements are so precise that I tremble to try it this once, much less ever again. Plus we cannot make it known, or we will be as hunted as before, if not more so."

Andrew nodded solemnly. "I don't think anyone knows there are druids again at all, and I prefer to keep it that way."

"Our genetic diversity is so small anyway, that regardless, we may not survive. Fortunately, only one parent need be druid to pass it on, so that our gene pool will be strengthened and expanded by the humans. But this single bloodline must be protected from discovery for as long as possible. That means you will have to raise our children during the daytime while we sleep."

His eyebrows shot up. The look on his face was very telling—he felt she should prioritize raising her children over sleeping in the day with Eric.

Rhain shook her head. "No, Andrew. It's not like that. I am reverting to the vampire. Depending upon the rate of change, if it remains the same, I have two years, tops."

Andrew looked at Eric. "How did she talk you into this? I swear she's got a silver tongue."

"She didn't. She tried not to even tell me she could make me human for a day."

Andrew groaned and smacked his face with his hand. "And here I thought you'd be the one to keep her out of such foolishness! How do I always get suckered into her madness, I ask you!" Then he flopped back on the chair. "Why do I have to raise your brats, anyway?" he demanded.

"A druid must raise and train them, Andrew. In a year or two, you'll be the only one."

Andrew's eyes met Eric's. "You do know that her ability to predict durations is exactly horrible, right? She could be ninety and still a human, for all we know, at the rate she gets her predictions right."

"Once, Andrew. I was wrong _once_." Her hands were on her hips, a sure sign that Andrew had skated onto the thin end of the pond.

"One of one is one hundred percent!"

Eric headed off the thunderstorm he could see gathering on her brow by jumping up to put his arms around her. "How long will it take to make the potion?"

"Barely any time at all. That's just herbs. It's the day-long vigil for the spell that will be the hard part." She hugged his arms closer to her.

"So we can do it tomorrow?"

"The appointment with Dr. Lewis is for the day after tomorrow, so I will do the ritual tomorrow, and you'll do it the next day."

"A doctor?" Andrew asked.

"Um. We're doing IVF so that we get two babies," Rhain told him sheepishly.

"Really? Hey, did you know about that woman who had eight? You could do that, too!"

"Do you really want to raise eight infants?" Rhain demanded pointedly.

"Oh. Uh, no."

"Nor do I wish to carry and birth eight children at once. Two quite pushes my limits."

"Yeah, I see what you're saying there."

The next night, Eric woke to find Rhain particularly pensive, though she was not a generally talkative person to begin with, even now.

"Come with me," he asked her, and brought her out into the back garden. He leaned his forehead against hers and said, "Will you walk with me here tomorrow? Swim with me in our pool? Run with me in the heat of the day when we should be lying in the shade and hiding from the worst of the sun's heat?"

She nodded and kissed him fiercely. When he picked her up, she wrapped her legs around him with wanton disregard for any who might see them. He took her in the arbor beneath the cherry trees, with white blossoms falling around them like snow.

The sultry Louisiana night sang with the sounds of crickets and cicadas, the cicada brood having emerged again for the first time in thirteen years—right on schedule—to sing to them while they made love first roughly and desperately, and then slowly and tenderly.

Then they laid beneath the stars and said nothing at all as they held each other, perhaps for the last time. As he lay with her arms around him and the stars winking, Eric had second thoughts. Was it really worth it to give all of this up for a terrible, terrible risk? Was it that important, when another man could do it without the inherent danger?

But the siren's song of children, and even a single day in the sun, was more than he could bear. When morning began to tug at him, he turned to her and said he was ready and it had to be soon.

Tears slipped from her eyes, but she said nothing. She handed him the shot glass, and he chuckled. "I expected a vial or a beaker. Maybe a golden chalice or a cat skull," he joked.

She didn't smile. Her eyes once more wore that haunted sorrow he remembered. She looked ready to ask him not to do it, but she didn't. He was glad, because he knew in his heart he wouldn't have been able to do it, even as badly as he wished to, if she had pleaded with him.

But she honored his choice and said nothing.

He swallowed it in a single motion. He expected pain. He half expected death.

Instead, a feeling of euphoria came over him. It seeped into his mind slowly, softly, like the breeze from a butterfly's wings. His heart took a single hesitant beat, and he felt it. He suddenly realized he was holding his breath, and took a deep one, sucking in air as if it were the very substance of life.

He laughed. He looked at his hands and they looked normal. His enhanced vision was gone. The sound of the cicadas had grown quiet and distant and he realized that it was because he was hearing them as humans did.

He looked at her and laughed again. The euphoria surged and he turned in a circle. Then, a moment of panic seized him. He had felt the sun coming a moment ago, but the feeling was gone.

Rays of light burst over the horizon and Eric stared at it. He raised his arms and felt a stab of disappointment.

"It isn't that warm," he complained to Rhain.

Then he grabbed her and whirled her around. "Whoa, you got heavier," he blurted before he could stop himself.

She laughed, and he thought it sounded like music.

Still naked, he ran to the pool and jumped in. "AH! Holy!" He turned to her and laughed again, holding his arms up to her. "Come on in, the water's perfect!"

She jumped into his arms, then squealed, "Arg! Eric, the water's _freezing_!"

"I know! Isn't it fabulous? I'm actually shivering!" He promptly dunked her. He spread his arms wide and laughed. "I feel cold!"

"Not yet!" She jumped on him and hooked a leg behind his so that they both fell into the water.

He came up gasping and spluttering, trying to laugh and cough at the same time.

"Come on," he told her. "Let's go get ice cream! And a burger."

Two hours later, he sat in Merlotte's with everyone staring at him as he tasted yet another dish. He ignored them and ordered something else. Rhain sat grinning at him, and he thought it amazing that he couldn't hear her heartbeat.

Sookie walked up to him, looked askance at Rhain, and said, "Can I have a word with you?"

"No," Eric told her. "This is delicious!" He took another bite of eggs. Then he stopped. "It's not permanent. And it's dangerous. Bill can't do it, if that's what you were gonna ask." Then he changed to the cherry pie.

"Eric," she hissed, giving Rhain another suspicious look, "I can hear your thoughts!"

"Don't matter. Won't last," he muttered around a mouthful of food.

Sookie turned to Rhain and said, "You threatened me, bitch." She threw a punch, but Rhain ducked and jumped up from the bench.

Eric considered between getting in the fight, and not getting in the fight because he hadn't sampled the pumpkin pie yet. He settled for the pie, making sure he got extra whipped cream, then turned to see if he needed to intervene.

Sookie had Rhain's now long white-blond hair in her fist and was trying to push Rhain back. Rhain, on the other hand, was pummeling Sookie in the belly, growling like a wild thing. Eric decided they were okay for the moment and grabbed another bite.

"Are you just going to sit there?" Lafayette demanded.

Eric shrugged. "You make this pie? It's good. They're okay, let them get it all out."

Sookie tripped Rhain, falling on her. Rhain flipped her over, sitting on her and punching her in the face.

"Okay," Eric sighed. "I guess I should stop them."

Sookie's hand exploded with white light. Rhain was thrown backward against a table.

But unfortunately for Sookie, she didn't know as much about her own power as Rhain knew about being a druid. Reaching backward, Rhain picked up the flame from the lit candle on the table and her hands ignited.

"You want to play with magic, little girl?" she snapped. "I got your magic right here."

The flames slowly crept up her arms, mysteriously not burning her sleeves. "I threatened you to save your meddling, interfering little life, you miserable twat. Try that on me again, I dare you." She raised the fire in front of her face and sneered at Sookie through it.

"Never mind," Eric said. "They're fine."

He went back to eating as Sookie got up, dusting herself off, still glaring balefully at Rhain.

"What are you?" Sookie demanded.

Rhain flicked one hand and the fire vanished. "If I told you, I would have to kill everyone here." She closed the other hand, slowly damping the fire out there, as well. "And that's no joke. You are a fool to have used your powers in front of so many people. It's an excellent way to get yourself killed."

She walked over and sat down as if nothing had happened. "Did you try the key lime yet?" she asked.

Mouth still full of the pumpkin pie—which he'd discovered he quite loved—he muttered, "Nuh uh."

She gave him a bite of it, and he changed his mind. He rather liked the key lime.

"Really, Eric?" Sookie snapped at him.

He blinked, looking up at her in confusion. "What?"

She rolled her eyes and flounced away. He looked at Rhain, who shrugged and offered him a hamburger.

They went to the doctor next, and the doctor 'collected the sample' and came back into the waiting room later to announce that, "Your swimmers are just fine. Lots of them and good motility."

Pleased, Eric joined Rhain again and they went to the park, where Eric chased ducks and fell in the water, entirely unapologetic. As a vampire, he could have caught them, so they were no sport at all. As a human, their mindless flapping about amused him. Rhain laid on a blanket and watched him.

She took photos, as well, until his mind practically rang with the clicking of the camera.

When he grew bored with ducks, he laid down beside her on the blanket and watched clouds through sun-dappled oak leaves. He got a sunburn and loved it.

Evening came too swiftly, and he sat in the garden and watched every single precious, exquisite second of a sunset that had seemed to know he was coming—and had turned out glorious and perfect. Rose, gold, yellow, then lavender as the sky deepened back toward night.

When the final glow of it was gone, he tumbled Rhain to the grass and made love to her one more time. She had purposefully chosen a time when she wasn't fertile, she told him. Because she wanted to be sure to get twins, not a single baby. He wished that they could have a child from their lovemaking, but knew that her reasoning was sound.

They got back in the pool, which despite the sun of the day had barely warmed. It kept him awake, so he jumped in willingly. He only got out when he realized that Rhain was shivering so hard she was sloshing water out of the pool.

He tumbled her to the grass and they played like children, chasing each other and laughing.

But the euphoria died as the night drew towards a close. The day was over and Eric felt the faltering of his heart. He stumbled and gagged. Then he found himself vomiting forcefully, his body wracked by agony and fierce convulsions.

When the pain and vomiting subsided, he knew. He was a vampire again, and morning approached.

Rhain's eyes met his with tender sympathy. He fell into her arms and fought the tears that demanded release. She held him for long moments, until at last tugging him to go inside, out of the cruel murderous brilliance of the approaching sunrise.

He wanted the sun on his face again.

He followed her into the house, its stone structure crouching, foreboding and cold over him in the darkness.

One day, and never again.

He burned his hand as he pulled the door shut, and the sun's open enmity brought grief with it. It was a long time before he slept that day, despite the cruel insistence of the bleeds.


	18. Offspring

_I just wanted to apologize for the slow down. My daughter was away with the grandparents and is back now. So I have had the duties of gluing my fingers together, wiping... uh... noses and stuff, and various other joys of parenting._

_Also, so you know, we are remodeling our kitchen. I would not expect a lot for the next couple of days, as we'll spend the weekend pulling cabinets out and cleaning the garage to make room for the new cabinets to come. And stuff._

_And... I seem to have forgotten to post chapter 17... gah! So sorry!  
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><p><em>Anyway, thank you again to those kind souls who have alerted or faved, and a particular thanks for the reviews, which I hugely enjoy reading and look forward to finding in the mailbox. If I missed replying to yours personally, feel free to smack me firmly about the head and shoulders, as I try hard not to miss any!<em>

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><p><strong>18. Offspring<strong>

Dr. Lewis looked at him with clear irritation. "Listen, I know that you're paying me well to come out this late at night. And that's the reason I am trying hard to overlook your attitude. We did not make an error. There was no mistake. The procedure was picture-perfect. The problem here is that one of the implanted fetuses split. It does happen that people have twins without medical contribution, you know. It just so happens that in this case, one of the zygotes split into identical twins, and one did not. You must make a decision, and make it quickly, or it will be too late for the abortion."

He stood up and walked over to the monitor. "And the issue you face at this point is that we cannot know which zygote split, or which of the fetuses is which. We might take the one fetus that did not split, in which case you will have two of the remaining gender. There is simply no way to know. The only other alternative you have, is to carry all three to term. I do not recommend that. Your wife is tiny, frankly, and not well equipped to handle such a pregnancy."

Rhain snapped at him. "I'm right here, and I can hear perfectly well, Dr. Lewis."

"I'm sorry, Madam, I did not intend any rudeness. But those are your alternatives, and you have only the space of a couple of weeks to decide. Please remember that I have already cautioned you against carrying two, much less three." He snapped the file in his hand closed. "You two have paid me well, but not well enough that if you decide to sue me, I am willing to simply lay down and take it. Regardless of what you decide, there will be health consequences. This whole venture was ill advised from the beginning, with the fact that you have a weak cervix. I strongly urge you to consider abortion and perhaps adopt or use a surrogate.

"If you decide to proceed, then I will tell you this. I will not be responsible for premature labor and birth. I still urge you to go to bed rest immediately and to stay there for the duration, even if you only decide to take on a single fetus. Please, Madam, do not attempt to carry all three. I do not like to lose mothers any more than I like to lose infants."

He walked out the door then, closing it quietly behind him. The shut door held the click of finality for Eric.

He looked at her and saw the mutinous look on her face. He sighed. The argument was lost before it began.

"One hundred percent bed rest. Otherwise, we will never cease arguing. I will set Andrew on you like a dog during the day and I'll beat him to within an inch of his life if I find out you so much as sat up in bed."

She argued, but she gave in by the time he had carried her out to the car.

"Why can't you fix that with your magic?" he asked her.

"It's a defect, not an injury or disease. I can heal, but not reshape a body." She looked out the window, refusing to look at him. He realized it must have hurt her to admit it.

"So we'll get through it. We've already been through a lot worse."

"Can we not talk about it?"

He took her hand and squeezed it slightly, turning back to driving. "Okay."

She grew increasingly irritable, and refused the abortion. The doctor finally informed them that, given the development of the fetuses, one was a couple of weeks older than the others—she was probably pregnant when they had implanted the other two. Dr. Lewis reminded her that she had been on the fertility drugs, regardless of her time in the cycle, and that she had disobeyed his direct mandate not to engage in sexual activity of any kind. He would not be held responsible because she had lied and declined the pregnancy test.

He then told Eric that no matter the outcome, he was never working for them again. Eric invited him to reconsider his tone, or have his throat torn out.

Dr. Lewis was quite considerate after that.

Rhain refused to go to Dr. Lewis to give birth, instead insisting that Andrew could attend the birth and deliver the babies. There was much argument from every direction, but in this, Rhain prevailed. There would be no caesarean, there would be no medical doctor. Her babies were delivered outside a couple of hours after sundown while Eric paced and grumbled about how completely he wished he was elsewhere.

The first to be born was a son. They had chosen names already, and Eric pronounced his firstborn son to be Godric. A few minutes later, little Lief told the world what he thought of it—and it wasn't nice. Rhain labored a while longer, snarling and snapping at the man telling her to push, and then their daughter made her entry into the world to parents unprepared for her existence.

Eric held his newborn son and stared at dark eyes that didn't focus. A tiny tongue licked at closed lips and little Godric made soft, quiet sounds before settling down as if being born were an every day occurrence.

But Lief told the world that he was happier where he was, he didn't care who knew it, and he wasn't about to let anyone miss hearing about it.

Their baby girl, once intended to be named Keklewei, became Taima, after Keklewei's daughter.

The birth wasn't over, though. Rhain labored to pass the placentas, and when they came at last, they came in a surge of blood. Rhain cried out, and Eric hissed, the drive to protect forcing him to search for the enemy. But the enemy was Rhain's own body, no longer protected by the power of her vampire nature.

"Give her one of the babies," Andrew demanded.

Eric complied and Andrew told her to nurse her son. Godric was not interested, so Eric tried Lief, who latched on almost instantly.

"She's bleeding too much. Nursing will help her uterus to contract, which should help with it."

But the blood kept coming, and Rhain sobbed with pain.

"Do something!" Eric demanded. Then, "Why didn't I make her use the doctor, damn it!"

"If you had," Andrew told him, "she would be dead already. My magic and the herbs I've given her have slowed the bleeding, and there's no way to sew this up to stop the bleeding entirely. She's only alive because I can use magic freely, without giving myself away."

He turned back to his work, dismissing Eric as if he wasn't there.

"Give her the girl, see if she'll nurse," he instructed when Lief fell asleep.

When Eric took him, he wailed piteously. Eric walked with him, but couldn't get him to stop crying. Finally, when Taima was done, Eric handed Lief back. The moment he was lying on his mother again, he fell silent and went to sleep.

But blood continued to seep from Rhain's womb, and Andrew grew increasingly desperate.

"You're going to have to give her your blood," Andrew told Eric.

"Is it not poison for her like hers was for you?"

"No. She will find it gross, but it's not poison. Yours is not as potent as hers, no offense."

Eric opened his arm and knelt beside her. She turned away and vomited at the smell of his blood. He held her and a bloody tear fell from his face as she tried to fight him off, struggling to turn her head away without dropping Lief.

Her attempts were feeble, even for a human. Unlike most humans when they got a taste of vampire blood, Rhain did not respond by becoming desperate for it. She continued to struggle to get away, and Eric hated himself for what he was doing.

He pulled away and healed his wound after a few moments.

"It's slowing, but it's not stopping," Andrew said. Stress and pressure was mounting for him. "I need daylight. Fuck, this is not working." He stood up and paced back and forth.

"Can't you use stitches?"

"No. The bleeding is coming from a large area where the placentas were attached. It can't even be butterflied. I could cauterize it, but to do so, I would need to open her up in a surgery, and then she would probably die from the loss of blood due to surgery. She cannot accept a transfusion from another human, and we are not compatible." He paced some more as he spoke.

"Rhain," Andrew asked her, "what do I do?"

"Hamamelis," she whispered.

He groaned. "I don't have any!"

She pointed at Eric.

"Can you get to New Orleans and back by dawn?"

"I will," Eric told him. "Tell me where to go."

"In the French Quarters. Erzulie's Authentic Voodoo Shop. I'll call-"

But Eric was gone.

He flashed to New Orleans as fast as he could go, pushing himself with all of his strength. He found the store and banged on the door.

"I'm coming," a voice said from behind him.

He was let in and given the tube of homeopathic pellets. He dropped a fifty on the counter and flashed out again, the wind of his passing causing it to drift to the ground. The woman in the shop sighed, shook her head, and went back out to get in her car and drive home again.

Eric pushed to get home on time. He could feel the encroaching sun, and pushed harder. He blazed past Andrew, dropping the small tube into his hand. He flashed into the house just as the first brutal rays of the sun crested the horizon. He leaned back against it, taking a very human, very deep breath.

He sat in the hallway, waiting for Andrew. It was several hours later before he came in from the front door and closed the drapes.

"She's alive. She's resting and the hamamelis has stopped the bleeding. It will be a while before she's well again, though." He sighed and leaned back against the wall. "How the hell did that woman ever survive without us?"

Eric grinned. "Seems that way, doesn't it? Really, though, looking back on it, it seems like all the trouble started when she met me."

"You can't blame yourself, Eric."

"I don't. Not exactly. Someday, Andrew, you'll learn that if life's not risky, you're not really living it."

"I'm going to go check on her. I shut all the shutters so you can go to bed. You're starting to bleed already." He got up and turned to leave. "You know, I just want to say... this thing we got going on... it's really weird." Then he vanished toward the front of the house.

Eric got up and went to bed. That night, he awoke to a strange feeling. He could sense Rhain, she was calm and still somewhat ill. But he also realized that he could feel three other new humans, as well. His children were there at the distant edge of his awareness. Two little signs of contentment... and one little lightning-ball of energy that could only be Lief.

Eric rose and found Rhain in the garden. Being able to feel her himself was a strange thing, his blood had not connected them when they were both vampires, but now... Now he felt her deep contentment and it surprised him.

She had one baby in each arm and the other was laying on her. Taima had pink on; it would seem someone had gone to the store while Eric slept.

"Good evening, beloved," Rhain greeted him.

He smiled, brushing wisps of hair off of her forehead. "You are well?"

"Better. Thank you. I know going to New Orleans was risky. I appreciate you doing it for me."

He grinned at her. "Next time, can you almost die around Mardi Gras? I'll bring you back some of those bead necklaces."

She started giggling, which made Godric, sleeping on her chest, bounce up and down with the motion of her chest. Which resulted in her thinking that was funny as well, and only laughing harder. Eric sat back and watched her, amused and pleased by her uncomplicated joy.

"You're incorrigible, Eric."

"You know, I woke up to something strange," Eric told her. "I can feel them. All three of them, and you."

"Nursing must pass your blood on to them. Explains why Lief has been going nonstop most of the day. I swear he's six months, not a few hours old." She stifled a yawn.

Eric picked Godric up, careful of his head. He watched him for a while, looking up to find Rhain sleeping. He wondered how much longer it would last, this human side of her. And he felt certain that he would no longer feel her when she turned back.

But he had this, for now. It was more than any other vampire had ever gotten. A day in the sun, children of his own... it was more than he had any right to hope for.

Eric stared into Godric's eyes and could almost feel the ghost of his Maker smiling at the choice. He kissed the babe on the head and gently laid him back on his mother.

He went to Fangtasia, where Pam greeted him with her usual asperity. His list of necessary issues to be addressed was short and quickly dispensed.

"Well, one good thing that human has done for you, at least. You're not offering to kill everyone to settle their disputes. Though with some of them, I'm not sure I like the change," Pam told him in his office.

He kissed her on the forehead. "I miss your cheery attitude and all that pink, Pam."

"But not my shoes? They're totally this season, you know."

"My, you're slowing down, Pam. Don't you generally wear next season's shoes?"

He grinned as she griped about his dreadful sense of humor and went home to his children.

A week later, he rose to find three women in the yard with Rhain, each holding a different infant.

"What's all this?" he asked.

His voice startled one of the women, as he had flitted up behind Rhain, and she jumped so badly that the baby she held began wailing. Predictably, it was Lief. Eric took him, walking with him and whispering to him.

But Lief would not be appeased until one of the other women came to him. "May I try?" she asked, handing Taima off to Rhain.

Eric handed him over. Lief wailed a moment longer before abruptly quieting.

"We need help, Eric. We've interviewed for the last two days, and Andrew and I have narrowed the choices down to these three girls." Rhain stood up. "I'll take the kids and the other two, and let you get to know each of them on an individual basis."

"Okay," he told her.

He chatted with each one, irritated by the whole affair. He sort of understood, but he also preferred to let Rhain make such decisions.

He quickly changed his mind, however, realizing that he didn't like the first one at all. She was flighty and giggled at him every other word. She even openly tugged her shirt down to expose more cleavage. Even if he hadn't chosen to ally himself strictly with Rhain, Eric would have had nothing to do with her. He sent her off without even telling her to go back to Rhain and the children.

The next one, named Karen, he liked. She was an older woman, very calm and thoughtful. But she seemed to have a bias against the idea of vampires parenting, and even went so far as to ask him what would happen when his children went to school. It seemed she didn't realize this was intended to be a long-term position and that the children would not be going to school outside their home at all.

Stephanie was the last to speak with him, and he liked her immediately. But she was... a bit of a hippy, in Eric's mind. She was against firm discipline, which he didn't necessarily like, but he was willing to give it a try—and he had a feeling she'd learn soon enough that some children only responded to firmness. Namely Lief, who was already proving to be a handful while still just an infant.

In the end, Stephanie was chosen, in part because, as Rhain put it... "Andrew likes her. And I mean he likes her a lot. If he can't get along with the person he's got to watch them with during the day, then we have huge problems."

So that was that. Stephanie became their live-in nanny to share duties with Andrew and Rhain for the time being. It was, as Andrew had said, 'a weird thing', but it was their family and they accepted it as such.


	19. Double Exposure

**19. Double Exposure**

The children were fourteen months old. Rhain woke up in the morning and sat up. She didn't feel right. She got up and went to tell Andrew that the kids would be his and Stephanie's for the day.

A drop of blood fell on her hand. She reached up to her nose and found blood running from it. Heavy sorrow rose in her.

She had the bleeds.

Instead of walking to his room as she had intended to do, Rhiannon used the intercom system, which had been installed for Eric's comfort should anything happen during the day.

"Andrew?"

"Yeah?" he sounded sleepy, and Rhiannon cringed, feeling bad for him.

"I have the bleeds. I will have to leave the children to your care today."

Moments of silence.

"I'm sorry," he finally said.

Rhiannon took a deep breath, trying to ease the ache in her heart. "It was always coming, Andrew." She reminded him that the children would have to go to bottle feeding exclusively now, clicked the 'com off, and sat down heavily on the bed.

Eric sat up. "Rhain?" he asked.

"I am Rhiannon again," she murmured to him.

"Come to bed, then," he told her. "We'll rest together today and face the rest tonight."

But tears mingled with the bleeds and sleep did not want to come. Yet she woke that night without remembering when it finally had.

Knowing her babies had cried for her that day was the hardest part of it all. She sat in their room and fed each one as they awoke. Eric went into town to Fangtasia, and Rhiannon let the tears come in the private darkness of the nursery.

Nothing was left of her time with them on her body. It had reverted fully while she slept. The damage from childbirth was gone. She was no longer lactating, as she had been the day before. There was no evidence whatsoever of the birth of the children. Not a scar, a stretchmark... not even an ounce of extra weight.

She had pumped extra breast milk over the year, but the loss of the nursing connection weighed on her, especially when sweet, even-tempered little Godric, always the most attached to her, cried disconsolately when he couldn't have his 'nursies'. He did eventually take the bottle, throwing it and complaining bitterly several times first.

Rhiannon cradled him close and tried to keep herself from bleeding on his sweet little blond head. When he finally went to sleep, she held him until it was time for Taima's feeding.

It had been a very, very difficult year with nursing all three of them, and each of them deciding they wanted a different schedule. But now it was over, and Rhiannon ached for it. A year was such a brief window in such an ancient life. A sweet, fragile moment that was gone already.

Rhiannon slept that day, the full sleep of the dead, and woke the next night hungry.

That night would be her first to enter into Fangtasia since the night Andrew had brought her back to Eric. She took Andrew with her because he hadn't 'been out' for what he claimed was longer than he could remember.

She found what she needed quickly, the human men as well as the vampires all drawn to the powerful sexual energy she exuded as an ancient vampire. Many of the women were even effected, some more than others.

Pam, who had only rarely come to their estate greeted her simply, "Well, look who's back."

Rhiannon didn't reply, just gave the younger vampire a direct, cool look. Pam finally lifted an eyebrow and said, "I don't want any trouble in here. I haven't had to clean up in here since the last time you were here, and I like it that way."

But Rhiannon wasn't particularly interested in staying. She did so out of courtesy to Andrew, though. Eric was at home watching over the children by his own choice. She sat down on a bar stool at a high table and watched the rather mediocre, but apparently very popular band.

Another human approached her, apparently thinking himself to be quite suave. "I haven't seen you here before. Are you new to the area, or newly turned?"

"I'm newly turned," Rhiannon answered, not entirely lying.

He smiled. "You must be hungry." He leaned across the table. "We could go out to my car. I've been-"

Rhiannon's eyes narrowed and she leaned forward, glamoring him in mid-sentence.

"Are you trying to entrap me?" she asked quietly, nearly purring the question at him.

"Yes," he answered dreamily.

"In what way?"

"My buddy has a video capable phone. He's going to film you feeding on me. You can get a hundred bucks for that shit," he answered, still dreamy and distant.

"You will go outside and tell your friend that you were caught and that if you ever return to Fangtasia in hopes of entrapping a vampire, you will go to jail for trespassing."

He started out the door as she realized that there was some sort of altercation going on in the men's restroom. She was suddenly struck by Andrew's fear and uncertainty. She was at the bathroom and inside without a second thought.

A vampire was advancing on Andrew, playing with him like a cat with a mouse.

Rhiannon's fangs snapped out. "He is mine!" She could not allow this vampire to get even a drop of Andrew's blood, or he would be dead and the questions would begin. Then Andrew would be killed, for no vampire would let him live, knowing he was poison.

"He's not even bitten," the male vampire replied, hissing at Andrew.

Rhainnon flashed in between them. "He. Is. Mine."

"He's just a human. I want him. He smells niiiice." The vampire looked around her, licking his fangs at Andrew.

Rhiannon pulled the vampire's face down to hers, and exerted her will. "You will leave and never bother him again."

"Like hell I will," the vampire snarled at her, snapping her hands off of him.

Rhiannon felt a moment of panic, realizing she couldn't glamor the other vampire.

"He's just a human, what's the fuss?"

"Give me your clothes," Rhiannon demanded.

"What?" he sneered at her.

"I said, give me your clothes," Rhiannon repeated coldly.

"Fuck no," he told her.

She cocked her head, looking at him with disgust clear on her face. "They're just clothes, what's the fuss?"

"You know what? Fuck you, and fuck your human, too."

Rhiannon grabbed him and slammed him against the wall so hard plaster fell. "No, you won't. You won't even so much as look at my human. If you do, I'll tie you up with silver and leave your feet sticking out of the ground to burn off every day."

"Okay, okay. Damn."

"Get out." She let go of him and turned her back, effectively dismissing him.

He stumbled out and was gone from the bar in an angry flit.

"I think we should go home," Andrew said, his eyes slightly wild. "I was afraid I was going to be eaten or -"

"No." She stopped him. She held a finger to her lips to shush him. The vampires could easily hear through the walls. "I wouldn't have let that happen."

He heaved a sigh of relief. "Of course not. Thank you, I was really scared."

She wasn't sure how much of that was an act. "No trust that I can care for you?" she asked idly, as a vampire would ask the cattle.

"Oh, uh, it wasn't that-"

"Just shut up, and let's go. These vamps have no fucking manners."

Rhiannon felt anxious, though. Jittery and uncomfortable. Two such altercations in the same night set her nerves on edge. Losing the ability to glamor vampires had also thrown her off completely and brought her to the fringe of distress.

Rhiannon paid for Andrew's tab, dropping the fifty for poor Ginger, still there and still trying to retain her youth.

Walking through the front door, Rhiannon immediately realized why she'd been so apprehensive. A group of seven vampires stood outside waiting for her, the vampire from the bathroom standing at their head.

"Meet my Nest," the leader greeted her. "Next time, you'll share your human."

Rhiannon extended her hearing, and heard heartbeats, but none seemed distressed as any intelligent human would be if they were about to witness a vampire fight.

"Go inside to Pam," she told Andrew, pushing him and shutting the door. Pam would get him to safety, Rhiannon knew. Although Pam thought Andrew was a dork, but she knew the importance of who he was.

Rhiannon's fangs ejected and she hissed. "Next time, you'll give up your clothes," she replied to the leader. "You've picked a fight you can't win."

He smirked. "Byron is seven hundred. You don't stand a chance."

"I'm giving you one more opportunity to leave," she told him.

He fanged out and flitted toward her, his friends coming with him. Rhiannon dropped and picked him up by the ankles, using him like a bat to slam one of the nest females. She went flying, slamming into a telephone pole and knocking it slightly sideways.

Rhiannon still held the leader, so she let go of one leg and grabbed an arm of one of the other vampires who were piling on top of her.

With a heave, she tossed the others off of her, and spun swiftly, letting go of the two vampires at an upward angle and a high rate of speed. They shot off into the dark, and Rhiannon could only hope she'd throw them high enough that they wouldn't damage anything too badly when they landed.

But the other vampires had realized that she was formidable, and the first to be thrown had recovered and rejoined them. They circled her, and Rhiannon stood unmoving, fangs out.

"Don't be shy, now, kids. If you're going to play, let's play. If not, then depart and leave me be. If humans are injured in all of this, you know the AVL will hunt you down and you will be silvered in your coffins."

"The AVL doesn't control all vampires," one of them snarled.

Rhiannon honed in on him. "Now, Byron. Do you really think that any vampire is above the AVL, which is an agent of the Authority?"

"Russel was. Rhiannon was."

"And yet both are gone."

He hissed. "Some say not."

Rhiannon chuckled. "Some are fools. Are you?" She crouched. "Do you really think that you have anywhere near the power of either of those vampires? Russel alone was three times your age and failed to protect himself from the Authority. Do you think you can flout them for long?"

He was silent. One of the younger vampires started forward, hissing. He reached out and stopped her.

Rhiannon hissed, glaring.

"If we leave, will you let us go?"

"Will you leave myself and my human alone?"

"Yes."

She looked down, listening to the vampires behind her. "All of you?"

"I will see to it."

"Very well. Depart and mind your manners in Fangtasia from here on out."

"I will see to that as well."

He glared around at his Nest fellows. "You heard her. Go home. Now."

"But-"

"Now."

They left, glaring at her one by one before flitting away.

Byron pushed his hands into his pockets. "Not all of us believe Rhiannon is dead, despite the publicity."

"Get certain of it," Rhiannon told him.

"As you wish, Ma'am," he answered, tipping an imaginary hat. He flitted away.

Rhiannon walked inside to find out if Pam had taken Andrew home. She found them in the office arguing.

She stepped inside, and Pam glared. "Take care of your human yourself next time. He's out of control." Clearly, he had refused to go with her and threatened her if she tried to force the issue.

Rhiannon just stared at him. He stood defiant for a very long moment, then his eyes fell.

"I am disappointed in your choice," Rhiannon told him.

She walked out to the car, saying nothing to him as he got in beside her. She could feel his remorse and shame. When a sob escaped him, she pulled his head over and pressed her forehead against his. Taking his face in her hands, she kissed him on the cheek.

Quietly, she whispered, "You are one of four living druids. You are irreplaceable. You are more important than any vampire. Even one you love."

He nodded slightly, and she turned the car on, driving them home as he sat with his face in his hands and cried.

When they got home, Rhiannon explained the situation to Eric, who told her bluntly that she was too hard on Andrew. They argued until morning came and the bleeds forced them to bed.

But the next evening brought its own unpleasant surprises that drove the memory of their argument entirely from their minds.

"Hey, sorry to greet you first thing with bad news, but you're going to want to see this," Andrew said when they opened the door to his sharp, urgent knock.

He led them into the living room, where he turned on the rarely-used Tivo and switched the TV over to the proper channel for reception.

An anchor woman appeared, standing behind Fangtasia.

"We're standing here at the scene of the bizarre fight between eight vampires last night. As you can see over here," the camera panned to the knocked over telephone pole, "the fight was brutal enough to knock a telephone pole sideways." The camera panned back. "But not even that can prepare you for the reality of just what took place here. We have footage from a camera phone that will shock you."

She walked over in front of the telephone pole. "But perhaps the most shocking part of all, is what they were fighting about."

The screen flickered and changed to a bouncing video, which stabilized to show Rhiannon facing down the leader of the vampire nest.

"Meet my Nest," the leader on the screen said, as he had the night before. "Next time, you'll share your human."

The camera switched to Rhiannon, "You've picked a fight you can't win."

The scene cut out all the rest of their discussion, fast-forwarding to the fight. The recording joggled and bounced, but the fight was reasonably clear, especially since they had slow-motioned some sections of it, exposing harsh details of the fight. Then the post-fight discussion was shown, also only in part.

Rhiannon was seen facing Byron, squatting in the dirt as if in submission.

"Now, Byron. Do you really think that any vampire is above the AVL, which is an agent of the Authority?" the Rhiannon on the screen stated.

"Russel was. Rhiannon was," replied the vampire on the screen.

The image switched over to the anchorwoman again. "These vampires were fighting over a human like dogs over a bone. We can only hope that the good guys won. Or are there any good guys in such a fight at all? And despite the claims of the AVL, there are some vampires who are outside their laws. I'm Coleen Alvarez reporting at Fangtasia in Shreveport. Back to you, Daren."

Andrew clicked the TV off. "It's all anti-vampire rhetoric after that."

"Fuck," Rhiannon swore unrepetantly. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

Eric's phone rang. "That'll be Nan," he said, sighing.


	20. Complications

**20. Complications**

"How did this happen?" Eric asked her after telling Nan tersely that he was looking into it, and yes, he noticed the vampire's resemblance to Rhiannon.

"A vamp attacked Andrew in the bathroom. I set him clear. He went and gathered up his Nest and brought them to back him up as we were leaving." She swiped a hand across her hair, tied back in a braid as it often was. "There was a human earlier who tried to entrap me into his car. He had someone else waiting with a camera phone. He left, but apparently his buddy remained, camera phone in hand."

"There's no way to avoid recognition of you. That's on Jackal News. It's going to be everywhere."

"The video has gone viral on the internet, too. International."

"I hate technology," Rhiannon groaned.

Eric's phone dinged again. "Yes," he replied to something on the other end. Rhiannon didn't bother to listen in.

"She's mine... No... New Progeny. I'm afraid she was still hyped up on my blood... Yes, I do know how much she looks like Rhiannon, that's why I chose her. I was a bit infatuated with her... I'm sure you can smooth it over... No, you're right, I'll definitely do a piece for you... I'm sure she'll be happy to dye her hair...No, I won't. No other vampire is required to expose their living history, and she isn't, either...Okay... Yes, there are people who have seen her around as a human." He snapped the phone closed, looking down in irritation.

He stood still for so long that Rhiannon finally asked, "You told her I was a new Progeny?"

"What would you like me to tell her? Plus, it explains the children and the fact that people saw you in this area for two years as a human. A druid, really.. but out and around during the day." He put his hands in his pockets and went back to brooding.

It took almost a year for the rumors to die down, but after the doctor 'leaked' medical records of her triple pregnancy, mysteriously lacking a name and address, the furor died down. Rhiannon was introduced by the AVL to the world as a relatively new vampire who had been drunk with the blood of her Maker when the incident occurred.

Fortunately, the footage was too dark and poorly lit for people to argue very effectively against her red hair and the claims that 'the Rhiannon' was taller. It was interesting how she had become larger than life simply by dying—or appearing to.

Andrew came to Rhiannon one evening. "I want to talk to you about something. I know you said it's likely that I won't be able to pass on my druid genes. Do you think I should avoid marriage and children? Since I technically died, could I be dangerous to them?"

Rhiannon looked at him in surprise. "No, I don't think that at all. You're more human than druid. You'll probably be able to reproduce just fine." She sat down the bottle of Tru Blood she'd been avoiding drinking. "Is there something you want to tell me, Andrew?" She grinned, able already to guess what it was.

"I'm going to ask Stephanie to marry me. But not if we can't have children. She really wants kids of her own," he told her. "She loves your kids so much."

"They're growing up so fast," Rhiannon sighed. "I miss them. They don't even wake up at night anymore."

Andrew took her hand, and Rhiannon smiled at him. It wasn't much of a smile, but all she could muster.

"I know it's hard for you," he whispered.

She looked away and wiped a tear out of her eye. "There's nothing that can be done. We already keep them up late to get what time we can with them."

She straightened up. "Anyway, no. I do not think you'll have druid children, but I do think you'll have perfectly happy, healthy human ones."

"I'll ask her this week." He pulled a box out of his pocket. "What do you think?"

"It's small, Andrew. Don't we pay you enough that you can get her something bigger?"

"Oh. I... well... I asked the clerk for help."

"Hmm, and how were you dressed when you asked this clerk for help?"

He shrugged. "Like this." He was wearing baggy sweats and an old, stained t-shirt.

She handed him the ring box. "Go back tomorrow and return this. Wear that tailored suit I got you that you thought would be useless."

"She's not that kind of person," Andrew argued. "She won't care that it's small, only that I picked it out for her."

"Well, Andrew, first off, you didn't pick it out. Secondly, it's not about her, it's about you, and also about us as your employers. I pay you well so that you can afford the good things in life. I expect you to provide the good things in life to your family, while you're at it. You shouldn't get a ring that some bitch at a counter thought you could afford, you should get a ring that tells her you can and will provide for her and any children that you might have. If she feels it's too garish, then get another one, but pick it out together that time." She leaned back in her seat. "Any woman who can't appreciate a beautiful diamond, whether she's the granola-crunchy kind like Steph or the high-powered executive, does not understand men."

He blinked at her. "I thought this was all about the woman, not us guys."

"It's all about how much she appreciates you. If she doesn't appreciate you, and doesn't recognize the ring as your attempt to display your willingness to care for her and her feelings, then kick her to the kerb and find one who will." Rhiannon picked up the Tru Blood and pulled a face. "This shit is disgusting. Seriously."

"You can't stay out of Fangtasia forever. You'll either have to go there or you'll have to glamor someone eventually."

She snorted. "One visit in one year and all I got was trouble. I'm one for one and doing little better if you collect all of my total appearances there."

"You found me there. You found Eric there. Can't be all bad. That's one for two. But don't worry, I won't tell Eric he was trouble."

She laughed and threw one of the cardboard coasters off of the patio table at him.

"Ow!" he objected. "Damned vampires, there's something wrong with you when you can leave a welt with a coaster!"

"I know you're lying, Andrew."

He sighed. "You take all the fun out of it."

He followed her advice the next day, and they were married in the fall. Rhiannon insisted adamantly that the wedding be held in the great hall, which she proceeded to have repainted. By the time the work she wanted was done, there was real sod, a perfect scene of an outdoor park, and a high powered floodlight in the back to mimic sunlight. Birdsong was piped in behind the orchestral music used for the wedding march, and the entire scene was as near perfect an approximation of a day wedding as one could get inside and without frying vampires with 'imitation' sun lamps.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, the chairs were cleared away, a stage quickly laid out, and a buffet was brought in for the human guests. Surprisingly, Andrew's mother, a dour, unpleasant woman, showed up to 'meet the bride'.

She made the sign of the cross at Rhiannon as soon as she was introduced, and openly called the 'vampire children' a 'pack of hell spawn'.

Rhiannon invited her to leave. When the gangly, noxious woman replied that it was her son's wedding and she would do as she pleased, Rhiannon pointed out that it was Eric's property and she would be trespassing.

When all of that failed, Rhiannon hissed at her. Mabel, being a woman of apparently at least a somewhat practical nature, fled. Andrew apologized for inviting her. Stephanie told her off for running her off.

Rhiannon politely asked her how she felt about the children she was helping to raise being called 'hell spawn'. Stephanie refused to believe that 'sweet Mabel' would say such a thing. It rankled Rhiannon and put a further wedge between them. Differences had already begun to form with the parenting practices that Stephanie employed. Rhiannon felt she was not strict enough, and Stephanie felt that children needed to be treated as equals.

But Rhiannon didn't press the point, because it was Stephanie's wedding day. She did her best to make it as positive as she could, beyond that incident, and peace and harmony were restored to their relative level.

Several months later, the adults sat chatting in the yard when Lief came out. He crawled on Stephanie's lap and said, "Mommy, can I have a drink?"

"Of course-" Rhiannon said.

"Sure, honey-" Stephanie said at the same time.

Stephanie subsided, looking at Rhiannon apologetically. "Sorry," she said.

Rhiannon shook her head. "You are with them all day. They see me for only a few hours at night. I suppose it was inevitable. But do not ask them to call you that. It must be their own choice."

Eric took her hand and Rhiannon knew that he knew how much it was tearing her apart. It was deeply devastating, despite being something she could do nothing to alleviate. She turned away as Stephanie picked up Lief and carried him inside to get him a glass of water.

She pulled away from Eric and flitted to the far end of the garden, out of sight of the patio tables. He followed her.

"You're doing that thing again," he said. When she looked up, he said, "I'm sorry, my love." He wrapped his arms around her. "I admit I don't know what to do when you cry, but I know this is a time for it."

She retired early that morning, but sleep came very, very late.

It was several weeks later that Andrew admitted to Rhiannon that Stephanie was spending a lot of time with his mother, around the children. He wasn't comfortable with it, after his own upbringing, but Stephanie was irritated by his supposedly 'irrational' phobia about his mother.

Rhiannon forbade her to take the children anywhere near Mabel. Stephanie argued. Rhiannon reminded her whose children they were, and threatened to fire her.

"You wouldn't dare. You know they're attached to me," she argued.

Rhiannon gripped the other woman by the neck and held her so that she couldn't look away. "That woman has called my children 'hell spawn'. You are exposing them to a woman who is grossly prejudice against them, and against their parents. I not only would dare, but I will do it instantly if I find out you've taken them to see her even once more. Just once." She shoved her away, furious.

Eric flitted to her side from Fangtasia. When Rhiannon informed him, he snarled and raged. Rhiannon asked him to remember that the children really were quite deeply attached to her. If she would toe the line and not take the children with her, it would be healthiest for the children to get to keep her in their lives.

He relented, but he was clearly very angry. Just before dawn, a young man came to the house. Rhiannon smelled werewolf and lifted an eyebrow at Eric. He shrugged and looked askance at Stephanie.

Five weeks later, Stephanie told them that she had gotten saved, thanks to Mabel's testimony and she was going to start taking the children to church.

Rhiannon lost it. Such fury rose in her that she could barely contain herself. "These children cannot go to a Christian church," she snarled. "Don't you dare ever take them anywhere near a Christian church! I would sooner kill you! You speak one word of that Christian dogma to these children, and I will kill you!"

"I will not be silent about the Truth!" Stephanie declared, stomping off towards the house.

Andrew followed and argument sounded from inside the house.

Foolishly, the next night, Stephanie demanded a guardianship slip in order to enroll them into a preschool. Rhiannon gaped at her.

"Are you out of your mind? First you want to take them to Church, now you want to put them into preschool? What the hell are we paying you for, to shove them off onto someone else?" She was nearly vibrating with fury. "These children cannot go to school. They will be homeschooled. What the hell do you think will happen when their druid traits surface?"

At Stephanie's blank look, Rhiannon turned on Andrew. "You married her and didn't tell her? You married a woman who doesn't know what you are... what my children are? Have you lost your mind?" She was aghast. It was an immense betrayal. Andrew had promised to tell her early on, well before he had even talked of marriage.

"You're going to raise them to be druids?" Stephanie demanded.

"No," Rhiannon hissed, snapping her fangs at the woman, "they _are_ druids, you fool. Druids are born, not trained." She grabbed Stephanie's face. "And Christians butchered them until they were extinct. These are the last in the whole world. If Christians find out about them, they will genocide them again as they did before. You will never, ever take these children to a Christian church or to a school."

"Christians are pacifists. Jesus died so that we could live. Love your neighbor!"

"Pacifists my ass. In the 1980's, they were still murdering homosexual people in the United States, and homosexual people are still attacked. Don't you dare try to tell me that Christians are pacifists. I've watched witch hunts, vampires hunts, and massacres of entire indigenous populations all over this globe at the hands of Christians and Muslims. Beasts, the lot of them!" She snarled, fighting with all of her strength to get her emotions under control.

She jerked Stephanie to her, opening her arm and holding up a finger. "Lick it," she commanded.

Stephanie struggled, "No!"

Rhiannon glamored her. "Lick it," she commanded again.

Andrew paced behind them, his fists clenching and unclenching.

"You will forget that my children are druids," Rhiannon told her. She dreamily repeated it. "You have no desire to ever take them to church. In fact, the very idea seems repulsive to you somehow. You just know that they need to be homeschooled. In fact, you'll go online and look up all the reasons why homeschooling is best and convince yourself completely."

She released Stephanie and stepped back, attempting to put on a calm demeanor.

She asked about her day and the children's day, as she always did. But her eyes met Andrew's with anger and accusation. When the daily report on the children was done, she told Stephanie she had something to discuss with Andrew, and dragged him into the garden for a talk.

"I tried to tell her," Andrew said. "But when I brought druids up to her, she started in about how they were evil and they used to sacrifice animals and all sorts of stuff. So I kept putting it off, trying to change her mind."

"Andrew, this is a problem. In fact, this is a staggeringly huge problem. I don't know what we're going to do. A Christian is a problem by itself. One that hated druids even before she got religion is a bigger problem. That she is so in love with your mother, who is also a Christian and hates vampires and my children is beyond a problem." She sighed.

"We haven't been getting along since the whole Christian thing, either," Andrew said sadly.

"I will not glamor her out of being a Christian. Though the desire is there, and very powerful," she told him. She stopped, the need to destroy overcoming her. She picked up a cement bench and pulverized it. "Gah! Unbelievable! It's the worst possible nightmare coming true."

"Is it really that bad? I mean..." Andrew's voice faltered, "... most Christians are irritating but harmless..." his voice trailed off at her look of sheer fury.

"Do you know who was responsible for creating the Iron Maiden, and what it was used for?"

"The band?" he said, confusion on his face.

"The torture device," she corrected him. "Two forged pieces of iron in the shape of a human body. Inside, there are spikes. When the cranks on it are tightened, the spikes pierce the person inside in non-lethal spots. Eventually, they die—after hours upon hours of horrific agony."

He looked pale. "I've heard of it, but not paid much attention," he admitted weakly, his voice as pale as his face.

"It was created by Christians—human Christians—to test for witchcraft. If a druid, for example, was put into it, before they died, they would spark and the device would fry them. If a witch was put into it, she or he would start smoking before they died. Humans, though, just died. Vampires, of course, just lived on in it, in horrific pain, until the bleeds took them. So do not speak to me about how 'harmless' Christians are.

"They are only harmless so long as their tidy little world is not upset. Provided their preachers and priests tell them to interpret the Bible in a harmless, hippy fashion, they will do so. But when the leadership changes, humans—Christian or otherwise—turn into rabid animals." She pulverized a statue. "Furthermore, believe me when I tell you that the Catholic Church still knows perfectly well about druids, werewolves, vampires, and other supernatural creatures. They will stop at nothing to kill my children if they learn of them. Even more than the vampires."

"But why? What harm are they to the Catholic Church?"

Rhiannon sighed. "They are proof that the things that the churches have demonized for centuries are not evil at all. You are proof of that. You could heal every known disease, and most injuries on this planet. What they would do is abduct you, force you to keep their elite healthy and heal them, and hide you from everyone else. You would be a commodity, sold to the governments that would give them power in exchange for healing."

"That's insanity," Andrew argued.

"Let me clue you in on something, Andrew. I've lived a long, long time, and there's something I've known for most of that time. Almost all vampires are completely insane. Almost all humans are going insane a little more every day. To live on this planet is to lose your sanity a little at a time." She turned and stalked back toward the house. "And I'm sorry, but your wife has just abdicated what sanity she had left. I fear for my children."

"She wouldn't hurt them," Andrew objected. "I know she wouldn't."

"Andrew, that is not a risk that I can take. These aren't just my children, not just Eric's children. Not your children or her children. They are humanity's children. They are healing for the world. But they will be under attack by every group, government, or religion that wants to control humanity. Control the money and you control the world. Control a person's health, and you control their money. Period. The kids are not safe. And they are not safe in the hands of a person whose holy book says, 'Suffer not a witch to live'. Fanatic she may not be now. But when she sees them doing magic, she will first try to have them exorcised, and then when that fails—as it always does—either she or someone she knows will blab about them and they will be executed."

That night when Eric returned from Fangtasia, she explained it all to him, as well.

A week later, Stephanie left on her own, quitting and going to Mabel's house to live.

It was only three weeks later that the Department of Children's Health came to the door and demanded to see the parents of the children. When informed that the parents were vampires, they tried to take the children, which caused Andrew to panic.

DCH very quickly found themselves meeting at least one irate parent. They left quickly, but vowed to return with a court order to 'rescue' the children.


	21. Abduction

**21. Abduction**

Rhiannon immediately demanded that the children and Andrew be taken to her old cabin in St. Croix. They took them to Tallahassee, where they checked into a vampire hotel under assumed names. They chartered a private airplane and took them to St. Croix the next night. Then, Rhiannon and Eric returned to Louisiana.

By the time they arrived back, there were police cars in the driveway of their estate. A short, wiry fellow approached them as they got out of the car, his badge exposing him as the Captain of the area's State Police.

Rhiannon stepped in front of Eric and took the papers. He gave her a furious look, but she winked and he stood down, though he did so with arms crossed and a glare.

"Officer, this 'warrant' is issued by the Corporate State of Louisiana, for the Corporate entity named Eric Northman. See the all capital letters? That indicates a corporation. As you can see, this is private property. You passed the No Trespassing sign at the entrance, yes?" At the man's nod, she continued, "Then, as you can see, no such corporate entity resides here. Now, I will thank you to take your corporate papers and depart according to the No Trespassing sign."

She handed the papers back to him. "Since Louisiana does not have a duty-to-retreat law, and because you are here in service of a Corporate Entity rather than in pursuit of the law as laid out by the Constitution of the United States, I respectfully ask you to leave immediately."

He shifted uncomfortable. "It's my duty to serve this warrant on these premises, Ma'am."

"We do not consent to any search. Without proof of probable cause, and without criminal charges, this warrant is unlawful, and it is to be served upon the person of one Corporate Entity named Eric Northman. Such a corporate entity does not exist, and does not reside at this address. Additionally, the minor children listed on this unlawful seizure notice are those of Corporate Entities as well. These Corporate Entities also do not exist. Thank you, and good night."

The police left.

"What was that?" Eric demanded.

"That, my dear, was me protecting our children. Those are not officers of the law, those are servants of the corporate State of Louisiana. That was not your name, it was the name of a Straw Man, a dummy corporation."

Later that night, Nan showed up. To Rhiannon's fury, she was as tickled as a bear's ass sitting on a feather.

"This is perfect! Do you have any idea what this will do for Vampire rights? Children! The humans love children!"

"I will not allow them to be used in your schemes," Rhiannon told her.

"_You_, will not _allow_?" Nan snarled the at her, ejecting her fangs. "You will do as you're told, or you will face the True Death."

Rage roared through Rhiannon, and the only thing that saved Nan was Eric. He laid his chin on her head from behind her, his arms around her.

"We will go to their courts, but we will not surrender our children. If they find in our favor, all will be well. If they do not, then we will go to ground. We have already removed the children from their range of influence," Eric informed her. "But there will be no so-called 'protective custody' nor foster care."

Nan glared at Rhiannon for a few more seconds.

"Very well," she told Eric at last, unwitting saving her own life with her acquiescence. "Play nice, though," she told Rhiannon as she left.

Rhiannon picked up the grand piano and threw it against the wall of the castle so hard that the wall smashed with the piano with an enraged snarl. "I hate that woman!"

"I would never have guessed," Eric answered, his voice droll and one eyebrow lifted. "I liked that piano, you know."

She waved her hand dismissively. "I'll get you another."

He grinned. She huffed. He raised an eyebrow again. She crossed her arms. He blinked patiently. A smile played the corners of her lips. He grinned again.

"Oh, fine," she said. "I'll play Nan's game. But I'll do it my way!" She leveled an index finger at him.

"Whoa," he said. "Don't shoot. I'm unarmed."

"My love, many things you might be, but 'unarmed' is never one of them."

He pulled her against him and snuggled her close. "I meant what I said. If we lose this kangaroo court, we'll go to ground. I will never let them have our children any more than you will. But Rhiannon?"

"Hmm?"

"Let me deal with Nan, please. You take care of the court stuff and I'll deal with her," he told her.

"But-"

"Please? You're a little... hot-headed." He kissed her on the forehead.

She pulled back to glare at him. "I am not-"

He tilted his head toward the crushed piano, dangling out of the mangled wall.

She rolled her eyes, but confessed, "Okay, maybe a little, sometimes."

"I've lost count of how many pieces of furniture we've replaced now. At least you've quit uprooting trees." He grinned and headed for the door.

"You're not funny, Eric!" she yelled after him. She could almost see his grin as he flitted away towards Fangtasia, even though she wasn't out there to witness it directly.

"Smug bastard," she said affectionately.

Two nights later, a summons to court was delivered. This time, it was in her new vampire name, Sharon Moore. Rhiannon sighed. It was all capitalized, of course.

The court was to be held at night, in three days. It seemed they wanted the children sooner, not later. She immediate wrote a short letter to DCH, requesting Discovery of all items and articles in their possession relating to the case.

Three days later, she arrived at court, her hair freshly dyed red, wearing a dark blue power suit. Eric stood beside her all in black.

After the judge entered, Rhiannon was called, "The Court now calls Sharon Moore to the stand," the bailiff said.

Rhiannon stood up and walked to the front of the audience area. "I will remain here, on United States soil," she stated.

The judge, an older woman named Rose Albright, told her, "You refuse to enter the Court of Law?"

"I refuse to enter the court of Admiralty Law," Rhiannon told her.

The judge shook her head. "Are you Sharon Moore?"

"May I see the document in question, please?" Rhiannon asked.

The judge nodded and the bailiff showed her the paperwork. She held it up, "I am a vampire. The person on this paper is a corporate entity. No, this is not me."

"Your name is not Sharon Moore?"

"I am called by Sharon Moore, but I am not a Corporate Entity," Rhiannon replied. "According to the vampire rights amendment, am I legally entitled to a fair and speedy trial?"

"You have not been charged with anything, Ms. Moore. This is a custodial hearing."

"Can you please tell the court whom you represent?"

"I represent the State of Louisiana," Judge Albright answered.

"The State of Louisiana is a party to these proceedings. Can you please state, for the record, the legal definition of a conflict of interest?" Rhiannon asked her.

"Pardon me?" the judge drew up to her full, very short, height behind the podium.

"Conflict of interest: a situation in which a person has a duty to more than one person or organization, but cannot do justice to the actual or potentially adverse interests of both parties," Rhiannon stated. "Do you, or do you not, accept money from the State? Does this not make you a party to these proceedings?"

The judge stared at her. "Are you questioning my integrity?"

"I am questioning your legal qualifications for holding this 'hearing'," Rhiannon replied. "It is no more personal than you questioning my ability and right to parent my own children."

"Do you realize that I could have you held in contempt of court?"

"What will happen to me if you do?" Rhiannon asked.

"You will be arrested. It will be a very long time before you see your children again." She tapped a pencil on her desk in agitation.

"Let the record show that I have been placed under duress with threats of unlawful kidnapping and incarceration of my person by agents of the State of Louisiana, a party to the proceedings."

The judge's face contracted into a grimace of pure loathing. She stood up. "I don't have to put up with this," she snapped, and walked out.

Rhiannon ignored the shocked whispers behind her. "Let the record show that the captain has abandoned ship. As a sovereign, I take command of it. Let the record show that I dismiss this case _with prejudice_."

She turned to Eric. "Let's go."

They walked out, and Nan came up behind them. "What the hell was that?"

"That was the law in action," Rhiannon replied. "I was a conspiracy theorist before I was turned. Actually, though, I'm a little disappointed. I didn't even get a chance to use Sui Juris."

"What?"

"One who has all the rights to which a freemen is entitled; one who is not under the power of another, as a slave, a minor, and the like." Rhiannon elaborated.

"No, I mean, what were you doing? You were supposed to be fighting for vampire rights to children."

Eric cut in, "Nan, you're seeing this all backwards. Sharon just fought for the rights of humans as well as vampires. We can use that to the advantage of the AVL." He took her arm and led her off toward her car, and Rhiannon shook her head.

As if she would have played the circus Nan wanted, with her children and Eric's future at stake. Rhiannon left to call Andrew on the satellite phone they'd left with him. She spoke only briefly, keeping the call short and hard to triangulate. She refused to take any chances, and the case had gone mainstream already, all over the world.

Immediately after it, the human Mass Media began reporting on it and Rhiannon watched it. They stated that the case was dismissed on a legal technicality and could not be brought back to the courts. Nothing was said of what really happened, and Rhiannon sighed. Of course not.

But Nan went on the offensive. She sat Eric down and let him speak—an excellent choice given his natural charm and sophistication.

"You're right," the Eric on the screen in front of Rhiannon said to a hidden, behind camera Nan, "it was a case about a vampire's children. But it was more than that. It was about the American legal system. It was about the right of all parents.

"As the government increasingly intrudes of the lives of Americans, more people are losing their children for illogical reasons that have nothing to do with gross negligence or even abuse."

"Eric," Nan asked him, "some people will state that vampires should not have children. What would you say to them?"

"I would ask them why, and I'm sure they'd have various reasons. The first one to address would be the belief that children cannot thrive with parents who are only awake at night. Yet our children are not only happy and healthy, but they are well taken care of. We spend several hours a day with them—more than the average middle class working American, in fact. So far, their development in motor skills, social development, and intelligence has been outstanding by every consideration of each factor." Eric stated.

"But there have been rumors that you had other people raising your children. Is there any truth to this? And how does that effect their emotional development?"

"We all have others raising our children. Schools, day cares, preschools, babysitters, relatives. Rare indeed is the child that lives in a vacuum with only parents to raise them. If we are to start taking away children that do not get enough 'parent time', we will have to remove all children who are in boarding schools, and the President's children, as well. Who has less time for his kids than the President?" Eric's charming smile and chuckle reflected the absurdity of the idea of removing Presidential offspring simply for lack of time with a parent.

"But you are not biologically related to these children. Many would use this as an excuse, wouldn't they?" Nan continued.

"Adoptive parents are not related to their children. Are they any less parents than anyone else? If we begin to allow biological connection to be the single factor in parenting, then we arrive at a new problem. Step parents who adopt their spouse's offspring would become non parents. Adoptive parents would become non parents. Our already overloaded foster system would be flooded with 'parentless' adopted children from all over the world. Such an argument is as absurd as the idea that any parent not with their child twenty-four hours a day should lose their child."

It was clear that they weren't finished, but Rhiannon clicked the TV off. Although she had won, she felt a deep, abiding misgiving. Something was terribly wrong, she thought, but she didn't try to place it. It was probably residual discomfort from the whole experience.

It took a solid week for people to get bored with 'dismissed on a technicality', so they brought Andrew and their children home.

To Rhiannon's great joy, the children were thrilled to see her. They got to stay up late the night they arrived, which didn't hurt, either. There were s'mores and ice cream and new stuffed animals. There were cuddles and kisses and grubby little hands. There was Lief, running full speed for the forest, naked.

Eric dragged him back and wrestled his clothes back on him to the combined sounds of wailed protests and smothered giggles.

They asked Andrew where Stephanie was the next day. It was a difficult day and evening for them all.

But the days passed and life settled back into a routine. Eric hired mercenaries to stand guard around the estate. Weeks turned into months, and Autumn came. With it came Halloween, and it was Rhiannon's joy to take her children on the annual candy trek for the first time. Her unease did not diminish, despite the relative tranquility of their life.

It was a week after Halloween, when all the photographing and playing and laughter had died back down to a normal level that Rhiannon and Eric woke up to a silent, dark castle.

A quick inspection found no sign of Andrew of the children, nor of anything amiss. Rhiannon checked the garage and found the Escalade Hybrid gone from its slot. She told Eric of it, and his face reflected the concern that Rhiannon felt.

"He wouldn't be back this late without a note or without telling the guards, at least," Eric stated.

Rhiannon sighed with relief. "I'm so glad that you think so, too. I can sense Andrew, but I think he may be unconscious."

"Go find him, I'll go find the children," Eric told her.

They both flitted away towards Shreveport. Rhiannon found Andrew in the Escalade with what was clearly a horse tranqulizer dart hanging from his shoulder. Fury rose in her with a stabbing viciousness that she searched for something to take it out on.

Andrew was lucky to be alive with a horse tranquilizer in his system. He would not awaken for a very long time. She picked him up and took him home, dropping him in his bedroom.

Then she went out and ripped apart one of the patio tables and its umbrella. Eric couldn't complain about that. Not as much as the piano, anyway. And being mostly metal, the patio table had been curiously satisfying, also.

An hour later, Pam and Eric arrived. Pam dumped Taima into Rhiannon's arms with a look of angry disgust at Eric. Then she flitted away.

Eric, to Rhiannon's gratification, looked as livid as she felt.

"Mabel and Stephanie?" Rhiannon demanded.

Eric nodded. "They almost made it onto the airplane. I stopped them on the concourse in line for boarding." Fury radiated from him in cold waves. But unlike Rhiannon, he did nothing to show his rage. He stood calm and unruffled.

It was unnerving, and Rhiannon felt an unaccustomed frisson of fear run down her spine. Eric's anger had always been, in its own way, far deadlier than her own.

She didn't ask what he intended to do. She would doubtless not approve.


	22. Vampire Games

**22. Vampire Games**

Eric left again immediately. He knew that the children were safe with Rhiannon. He was livid with himself. He had planted guards all around the estate, but never thought to assign bodyguards to the children. They had been abducted in the city by their 'nanny' and Andrew's mother, and it was partly hiw own fault.

But Eric was pragmatic, as well. He recognized the simple fact that a person is responsible for his or her own actions. And the actions of these two women had been beyond reprehensible. No matter their self justifications, and he didn't doubt that they had many, they had stolen children.

He squatted patiently and watched their car until they finished with the police and came toward it. He knew who the instigator in this had been: Mabel. Stephanie didn't have the wits to come up with it herself. But they would both pay for it. Pam appeared beside him, responding to his call.

"Must we?" she complained. "I'm wearing my new pumps. They were expensive and the last pair on the shelf."

"They stole my children."

"Fine," Pam replied, flicking her hand negligently. "Let's get it over with."

They dropped down in front of the two women.

"You stole my children," Eric said. They turned to run but Pam was behind them, fangs out. They turned back to him. "I smelled it all over the Escalade," he lied easily. "I want them back."

"But... but..." Stephanie's face went blank with surprise. "But you took them back from the airport!"

"I didn't take them," Eric said. "Whatever made you think I did?"

"Well..." her voice trailed off as Mabel shushed her.

"We don't have to talk to you," the aggressive older woman blustered. "You're not the police. You're not the FBI. You don't have proof!"

"Who. Took. My. Children. From. You?" He enunciated each word, saying them individually, coldly.

"A vampire!" Stephanie objected. "It was a vampire! We thought it was you! It must have been Sharon," Stephanie stated.

But of course, Eric knew it wasn't Rhiannon aka Sharon at all. "If it were Sharon, do you think I'd be here instead of at home? Vampires can dial cell phones, you know."

"But I-"

"Who took them?" he demanded, grasping her by the neck.

"You take your hands off of her, you demon!" Mabel shrieked.

So Eric grasped her neck as well. His face inches away from hers, he told her, "You kidnapped my children. Now they have been taken by an unknown vampire. Because of your arrogance and your willingness to break the law as well as steal—which last time I checked was against your Commandments—you have let them be abducted by what you label as a 'demon'. They were safe at their home, but now they are... _Where?_"

"I am a warrior for God! Those children need to be raised in the light of God's love!" she yelled at him, choking a bit at the end as Eric increased his pressure.

"What they need is to be with their parents. What they need is to be sheltered and protected. What they need is to grow up amongst those who understand and love them. The first time those children did magic, you would either kill them or torture them with 'exorcisms'. Which at the mildest includes being demonized for something that is completely natural to their very basic natures." He shoved her toward the car. "Get in."

Pam got into the driver's seat and Eric sat behind Mabel, who was in the passenger seat. They left the parking garage and pulled out and headed out of the city. Eric reached over and grasped Stephanie's chin.

"Whose idea was it to steal my children?" he asked her, glamoring her.

"Mabel said we need to save them from being raised by demons," she told him dreamily, her face lax.

Pam stopped at a stoplight and Mabel made a break for freedom, opening the door and trying to get out. Eric grabbed her hair with his other hand and held her to the seat.

"Leave the door open," Pam told her. "He's not going to let you go. If I plan it just right, your feet will slip out and drag on the road and leaving a couple of stumps behind."

Mabel shut the door. Eric didn't let go of her hair.

"What were you going to do with them?" Eric asked Stephanie.

"We were taking them to Mabel's brother's home in Florida," she answered, still gazing at him adoringly.

He broke the contact. "Did it not occur to you that they would miss their parents? Did you not think about the tragedy you were creating in their lives by taking them away from their parents? You stole children who were immediately stolen from you! You couldn't protect them. Did you even care about how they would feel?"

He was speaking to both of them, and jerked back hard on Mabel's short hair.

"What about you? Are you replaceable? Your mother, your father? Shouldn't we take them away and replace them? Humans are completely interchangeable, right?"

Stephanie started crying.

Eric looked at her. "I would kill you. I would kill you right fucking now. Mabel is going to die, I promise you that. But Rhiannon, for whatever insanity possesses her, has been discussing finding a way to reinstate you in their lives. She thinks it's healthiest for them. But I guarantee you this. Never, ever will I allow that while this woman," he jerked again on Mabel's hair, causing the woman to wail, "lives."

"You can't kill me," she panted, scrabbling at his hand to try to relieve the increasing pressure on her scalp. "Your AVL will kill you for it, I saw it on TV!"

"Do you really think they'll ever be able to link your death to me? Do you really think that they'll even find you?" He leaned forward. "How long do you think I've been killing humans and getting away with it? And some of _them_ died just because I was hungry, not because they stole my children and then couldn't protect them."

Pam arrived at the field, surrounded by protected wetlands. "And here we are," she said cheerfully. She got out and came around to the other side of the car. Yanking Mabel out by the hair, she held her easily as the other woman struggled.

Eric got out and the pair of them attacked her. Blood geysered into the air, and Stephanie jumped out of the car and took off across the field.

They let her run almost to the edge of it before Pam came and got her. She was dragged, kicking and weeping back to Mabel's body.

"Look well and remember what happens to those who cross vampires," Eric told her. Then he glamored her. "You will never go to the police about this. You will remember it, but every time that you think of telling anyone, you will feel an inexplicable terror and immediately abandon the idea. You know that if you ever try to tell, they'll blame you."

Mabel was dumped into the car and Pam got into it. She pushed the accelerator and got the car up to tremendous speed. An instant before impact, she flitted out of it. The door shut just as the car struck, spinning and lurching, until it rolled over. The unfortunate 'driver' was thrown from the car and skidded across the ground, bouncing and leaving a trail of gore behind her.

Eric picked Stephanie up and threw her over his shoulder. Then he flitted home. He tied Stephanie up in a spare bedroom, and went to rest for the day with Rhiannon. Time enough to argue the wisdom of keeping her alive the next night.

And that is exactly what they did. Rhiannon admitted that she wanted the other woman killed. But she also felt that the well-being of the children had to be considered first. Eric argued that no one who had abducted their children cared about their well-being. Rhiannon argued that she'd done the wrong thing for the right reason, which showed she at least loved them.

Eventually, the discussion culminated in Rhiannon's assertion that they should simply ask her if she'd be able to be around the children without trying to indoctrinate them with her religion. If she couldn't, then she should be glamored and sent home. Eric preferred death. Rhiannon pointed out that one death might be unremarkable, but if both of the kidnappers died, suspicion would be roused.

Eric couldn't find a reasonable argument against that.

So they marched in. It was about two hours later that Stephanie decided that she would be willing to 'homeschool' the children for them for five hours each weekday. She was informed that she would never be alone with them, ever again. If she ever spoke to them of her religion or spoke to them negatively about their parents, she would be gone permanently from their lives.

"And if you call DCH again, we will fire you and get a protection order preventing you from ever coming anywhere near them... provided we don't kill you," Rhiannon added. "Most likely, we'll just feel the need to kill you, though, frankly."

Stephanie sniffled, still upset from the experience. "We never called DCH. In fact, it set our plans back-"

Rhiannon turned the woman's face and glamored her. "Did you call DCH on us?"

"No..." Stephanie drawled dreamily.

"Mabel?"

"Not that I know of. And I think she would have told me," Stephanie smiled and reached out to try to pat Rhiannon on the cheek.

Rhiannon pulled away and said, "You understand your role? And you understand that you'll lose them entirely if you say anything negative about Eric, Andrew, or myself? That if you try to teach them that druids are evil, you will be dismissed? Any talk of demon possession, that kind of thing...?"

"Yes," she said, clutching the box of tissues to her chest.

Rhiannon and Eric left the room then, asking an irritated Andrew to drive her home.

"If she didn't call them, who did?" Eric asked pensively.

"Nan," Rhiannon stated plainly, looking at him levelly.

"Nan? Why would she do it?"

"She was thrilled with the idea of how much it would help vampire rights," Rhiannon answered. "And exceptionally irritated that I didn't play the 'court battle' game for her."

Eric stood thoughtful for quite some time. Could it be? At length, he said, "This could be a whole other problem."

"Indeed," Rhiannon agreed.

Little did they realize.


	23. Slutet The End

**23. Slutet (The End)**

"I think this is a terrible mistake," Andrew said.

Rhiannon sighed. She'd heard it for the last three weeks, over and over again. "Has she violated her agreement?"

"No, but-"

"Andrew, have you ever heard of Reactive Attachment Disorder?"

"Um. No. Why?"

"If I had died rather than reverting to a vampire, would you expect my children to suffer loss from that? Or if I were human and divorced and moved out, would they experience loss and grief and maybe even trauma that lasted a lifetime?" Rhiannon asked him, raising an eyebrow as she browsed for a new settee.

"Of course," he answered, looking offended.

"Well, RAD—Reactive Attachment Disorder—is a result of that sort of trauma and loss. It can cause a person to be unable to form healthy relationships for his or her entire life. Now, they've already lost me. I used to be there all the time. But then one day, without warning, I was no longer warm and ever-present. I was barely available for a few hours after dark before bedtime. Then, they lost Stephanie, too. They don't understand, 'But honey, she did something bad, so she can't see you anymore'. They understand that they've lost me, and lost her.

"Human children don't understand why they lose the people they love and most rely on. If we remove Stephanie from their lives, we're punishing her, certainly. But we're also punishing them with the possibility of never being able to form healthy relationships again. That's not fair to them, and they won't understand.

"I know that you object to the idea of a kidnapper being around them. But she did the wrong thing for the right reasons. And my children don't deserve to lose someone that they see with such great love that they wept without her. In particular, Lief would likely be unable to bond with anyone new.

"I've had a lot of years to observe humanity, Andrew. One thing I've learned is that children suffer for the terrible choices of adults. Stephanie will never have any freedom with them again. That's her punishment. She'll never have our trust—and she shouldn't. I'm ancient, my distrust won't ease with time like human distrust does.

"But I'll not punish my children for her acts. It's not fair or right. Humans' most precious treasure should be their children, yet they understand them so little. They acknowledge that they are a great gift, but they would rather their children suffer than forgive someone so that their children can have peaceful lives. You see it all the time in divorces. And these children are the children of humanity, Andrew. They're the future of humanity, and I'll not damage them from the very beginning." She sighed and pushed the keyboard away, leaning back in her chair.

"So you forgive her?"

"I'll forgive her, Andrew. But I'll never relax my vigilance regarding my children. When a man steals from you, you may forgive him, but you put your silver away after that. Forgiveness doesn't have to equal stupidity. Forgiving means you just quit carrying the rage. And eventually, I'll get to that point. Right now, frankly, I still want to rip her fucking head off." She put her fist to her lips and then released it, trying to let the tension out of her body. "I won't have to live with her forever. That's an advantage to being an immortal being. There's light at the end of the tunnel, and it's got her gravestone in it."

She grinned at him. "Did I say that out loud?"

"Say what out loud?" Andrew replied, deadpan.

"It's chilly out in the garden, but I think the sun room is still warm from today," she told him.

Four months later, Rhiannon woke in the day. She could feel Stephanie's terror. She stood, ignoring the heaviness of the bleeds, and rushed to the children's room, wary along the way of any windows that might be open. There was no one there and Stephanie's energetic signal had moved swiftly out of the house and away. There were dead guards in the main hall. Terror struck Rhiannon a hammer's blow.

She rushed through the house, searching for the children and for any trace of Andrew. The nursery was unruffled, no sign of a struggle. The house was quiet. But something was horribly wrong. She stopped suddenly, stock-still. She shifted her hearing outward, and heard the soft sound of stealthy footfalls. These bastards were quiet, she acknowledged, but not quiet enough.

They'd already tripped the Stephanie-alarm.

She levitated, and followed the sound.

The men never saw her coming. She took the first one from behind, drinking from him swiftly. The others turned and her and fired their weapons. But the man she was holding was wearing bulletproof gear, so their attempts were unsuccessful.

One did strike her in the left eye, though, a problem that barely caused her to pause. She dropped the first man and broke their silver guns, then was on a second man in an instant. She drank from him and her eye quickly healed, leaving behind a macabre red half-mask on the front and the exit blood running down her hair.

Then one of them regained his presence of mind. He pulled silver chains out of his pack and started swinging them. Negligently, easily, Rhiannon grasped them. She yanked on it to bring him to her grip. Dropping the chains, she drank from him as well.

The others rallied to his idea, though, and brought out their own chains as well. It was clear that they had intended to capture Rhiannon and Eric with chains. One swung his, better at it than the first. It wrapped around Rhiannon's wrist. She gripped it, and with little effort, flicked it back up and around him, before she ripped his head clean off.

Holding it, her face dripping with blood, she turned to the others and laughed. She made it a low, sinister laugh.

"Silver? That's the best you've got?" She shook her head. "You're not very well-trained, are you?"

"We're Blackwater," one of them muttered at her. "We're the best."

She turned to look at him, tilting her head down and gazing up at him through wisps of hair and drips of blood. "Then your best is pathetic, and all about to die."

One of them headed for the door. She beat him and ripped an arm off. As he screamed, she turned to the others and drank from his neck.

"You come into my home with silver. You bring guns. You sneak around. You just made the last mistake of your life."

One of them picked up what was obviously a walkie-talkie of some sort. She flitted to him and pulverized it, then without pause did the same to the rest.

Then she drank from every single one of them, while Stephanie's signature got further and further away.

Filled with an overpowering rage, she threw her head back and roared.

The living room did not survive the rest of the day.

She went into the bedroom and slept after her rampage, fury burning in her ancient heart.

The instant she awoke, she turned to Eric. He was waking slowly, but she shook him abruptly.

"What?" he asked, looking at her in surprise. That was one thing she appreciated so much about him—he was so rarely irritated by such things.

"Someone came in the day. They brought silver and they took Stephanie, Andrew, and the children." She stopped him as he started up. "I had to kill many in the foyer."

He stopped. "They wanted us, too?"

"I believe so. They came with silver. I can feel Stephanie. I am going to go to her."

"I can feel the children," he replied. "I'll go and get them. You get Stephanie."

Rhiannon sighed. "I should have killed her."

"Don't say that. You were right, the kids have thrived being back with her."

She nodded. It was a curt, minimal nod. Then she flitted out of the house. She followed the energetic trail of Stephanie and her captors. It was clear that the children had been taken a different direction. The only reason Eric could even sense them was because of her nursing them with his blood in her system. She could not sense them at all, and the fact haunted her every single day.

But never so much as today.

She sped over the top of trees, whooshing with great speed. When she finally got near her destination, she slowed down. She looked around, searching the building the woman was inside. It looked like a government facility, complete with National Guard protectors, chain link fences, and barbed wire.

But precautions against vampires had clearly been taken. She could sense the silver all around the building. One of the outbuildings was heavily cloaked in it, as well. This was intended to be a trap. And it wasn't just intended to be a trap, but it was intended to be a trap for a very powerful vampire.

Not one as powerful as she was, indeed, but one older than Eric.

And she could sense vampires inside. Two older ones—just babies to her—and several very young ones. Lackeys, no doubt. She suspected by the ages that it was Nan and Bill.

She slowly rose up onto the roof, and looked through the window on the top. She knew it was unquestionably a trap, that she could see through that window. But it was of little consequence to her. It was a sterling silver-laced multi-paned window, clearly intended to keep vampires out.

But, it was also her best bet to see what was going on inside.

Sure enough, Stephanie was inside. So was Andrew. No sign of children. Andrew seemed to be just coming around. Rhiannon noted with irritation that Sookie was beside Bill, her hand laced through his. Rhiannon sneered. She disliked both of them intensely, though Bill was difficult for her to read. She thought he could possibly be okay, but Sookie was simply annoying.

She looked up as she felt the presence of an older vampire behind her. Whirling, she hissed, fangs ejecting with an audible and sinister 'click'.

Eric floated up to her. "The children are hidden and safe. They were easy to retrieve, but not to a point I expect it is a trap. I think they assumed we would think they were here and use them as leverage." He shook his head. "You could have showered before bed, you know. You smell like death."

"Okay, Andrew," she retorted. "I'll keep that in mind next time my children are abducted again. It's a recurring theme, it seems."

Eric didn't smile at her almost-joke, though. It wasn't funny, despite the irony of it.

He took her hand. "So it's Nan. I admit I hadn't thought she would dare."

Then, he looked Rhiannon in the face. "It's probably a trap." Rhiannon nodded, and he smiled grimly. "Shall we, then?"

"The walls are covered in silver. Probably too much for you. I can clear the way."

"Do it," he answered.

She went through the window, landing easily as if alighting on the ground, crouching to hiss at Nan. "You have stolen my children again."

"Yes," Nan answered. She nodded her head and one of the humans pushed a button attached to an electrical wire.

A silver-covered plate closed over the hole where the gaping window dripped glass like an unrequited lover with flower petals: 'she loves me, she loves me not'. It would seem that Nan was a 'love me not'.

"Why?" Rhiannon demanded. "The Authority just cannot leave me alone?"

"The Authority thinks you're dead," Nan answered. "But I know that you're not only not dead, you day walk. So did Eric. I want whatever gave you that power. If I don't get it, I'll kill these two. If you still don't give it to me, I'll make a single call and your children will start dying."

Eric stepped forward, "I already-"

Rhiannon stopped him with a hand on his chest.

"That's not enough. I want more, if I'm going to help you day walk."

Nan's eyebrows shot up. "And what more could you possibly want?"

"Legitimacy. I want you to give me a vampire identity that checks out on all levels provided I don't encounter any older vampires."

Nan chuckled, "That's easily done. Now-"

"I'm not finished," Rhiannon told her. "I want you to get the humans off my back about my children, and keep them off my back. I never want to deal with their courts again."

"Fine," Nan responded.

"And Pam is to be allowed Progeny."

Nan growled. "Is that all? Get on with it, what else?"

"That is all," Rhiannon answered. "But it takes a day to prepare. It must be done by Andrew, so you must allow he and I to leave so that I can aid him in preparing it. No one else can do it."

"You'll make some for Bill, as well," Nan told her.

"The supplies are limited," Rhiannon answered. "I can make you three, no more."

"We only need two," Nan answered with a rude sound.

"No, you must take them each day," Rhiannon replied.

"But you were seen repeatedly," Nan snarled.

"Yes. That's why there is only enough for three left," Rhiannon answered.

"Two days? That's it? How long does it take to replenish the ingredients?" Nan demanded.

In six months, I can replenish the rare caterpillars required in the potion," Rhiannon replied. "But only Andrew can make it. He has a rare talent that is required."

"Like what?" Nan demanded, looking at him possessively.

"That's not part of the agreement. I will not tell you. If you want the potion, you will not push the issue."

"You won't make us any more after this. You can't be trusted unless we keep your children," Nan told her, her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"You can take the two potions at one time and it will last a year," Rhiannon lied smoothly. "But if you do so, you should beware that there are severe, detrimental side effects. Your vampire powers will reverse themselves. You'll be strong in the day, and weak at night. You will be vulnerable at night to other vampires as well as humans."

Nan paced, lost in thought. "But I will have vampires to help me at night. And my enemies will be vulnerable when I am strongest." She stopped and glared at Rhiannon. "Do it." Her voice was imperious, demanding, strident.

Rhiannon and Andrew were escorted out of the building, Stephanie's sobs following them out.

Rhiannon picked Andrew up and flitted back to their estate.

Over the next few hours, she gave him explicit, exacting instructions for creating the vials. Every single one, she explained, had to be completely perfect. They didn't know which one Bill would be given, and when Nan drank both, she would die either way. The two of them would kill her, regardless.

So Andrew toiled that day, laboring to get the doses each exactly right. He used more sun power than he ever had before, and by nightfall, he was nearly broken with the effort.

Rhiannon took him to Fangtasia and warned Pam to look after him or die.

Then, without another word, she returned. The guard at the door started and nearly shot her when she landed. But he walked her inside instead.

"Well?" Nan demanded arrogantly.

"I have them," Rhiannon replied. "Where are my children?"

"I will tell you after you give us those we are successful in walking in the sun tomorrow morning," Nan held her hand out impatiently.

Rhiannon held out the three vials. "Be careful," she said as Nan grabbed for them.

Nan slowed down and took them cautiously.

"Which one would you recommend I take?" she asked, a sly look on her face.

"Any of them," Rhiannon replied.

"Here," Nan commanded Bill. "You take one first."

He picked one up and unstoppered it. Looking at Rhiannon with no small amount of fear, he took a deep breath as a human might do. Sookie grabbed his hand. He placed the vial on his lips and drank.

All of the vampires in the room seemed to lean forward.

'Boom' came the first, faltering heartbeat. 'Thud', another. Then his heart began to beat. Sluggish at first, it picked up speed and then began to race.

"Breathe," Rhiannon told him.

He sucked in a huge breath and began to gasp and cough. His heartbeat returned to normal. He stared at himself in wonder, touching his hands to his chest and patting his legs. He laughed and turned to Sookie. "I'm alive!"

"For one day," Rhiannon reminded him.

"You take another," Nan told him. He looked taken aback. Nan glamored him, "Take another vial."

"Yes, another vial," he answered.

Rhiannon purposefully showed no sign of response.

Bill raised the vial to his lips while Nan stared hard at Rhiannon. At the last second, Nan grabbed the vial from him and drank it. She paused for a moment as her own heart started beating. She laughed, and then took the stopper from the last vial and downed it.

Raising her hand, she said, "Kill them."

But Rhiannon had anticipated it, and before the humans had finished lifting their guns, she had disarmed them of their silver automatic weapons.

She dropped them in front of Nan. "You're going to die, bitch."

Nan snarled. "Your children are dea-"

She doubled over, clutching at her stomach. "Aaah!"

"Greed, Nan. It'll get you every time," Rhiannon told her, walking around her. "We already got our children. They're safely hidden from you."

She leaped on a man who attempted to use his cell phone. "Anyone tries this again, and I will kill you."

She went back to Nan after crushing the phone.

Nan lay on the ground, writhing. Blood and foamy spittle ran from her lips.

"If you'd let Bill have all that power, you'd be alive, and he'd be dying. But you were greedy. If you'd come to me and asked, I could have been convinced to help you. But now I'm forced to kill everyone in this room to protect the secret." She knelt beside Nan, pulling the woman's head up by the hair. "Starting with you."

Then, Rhiannon flitted to the nearest vampire. Turning his face to her, she stared at him. "I'm sorry she involved you in this," she told him.

The other young vampires panicked and headed for the door, but Rhiannon was faster. She blocked it shut with the silver covered beam.

The vampire she'd started with stood with a dreamy look on his face.

Rhiannon felt a sudden surge of hope. Could it be possible? She flitted back to him as the vampires turned on Eric. He hissed at them and prepared to fight them.

"Wait," Rhiannon barked harshly into the room. Surprised eyes turned to her.

She walked up to the young vampire. "You will forget everything you've seen here last night and tonight. Turns out Nan made you wait and never showed up."

"Nan made me wait... never showed up... bitch. I hate her."

Rhiannon went over and opened the door, ignoring the agony of the silver. "Go home."

He flitted away. She shut the door as everyone stared at her.

"All of you have two choices. Be glamored to forget, or die."

"Wow, that's a choice? I'd say it's an ultimatum," one of the vampires piped up, his voice resigned. "I'll be glamored." He stepped forward and Rhiannon obliged.

One by one, some furious and some resigned, the vampires stepped forward. Only one chose to fight, and the fight was short and brutal as Eric dismembered her.

The humans, Rhiannon simply mass glamored. They all left as well.

All that remained was Rhiannon, Eric, Sookie, Bill, and Stephanie.

Rhiannon looked at Sookie. "And you. You are a problem yet again."

"I don't have to be," Sookie told her. "We just want to have kids like you did!"

"Why should I trust you?"

"How else am I ever going to have children with Bill?" she asked. "I've no reason to betray you, and if it succeeds and I have children, then I would have extra reason to protect them by keeping quiet."

"You're totally unconvincing," Rhiannon told her.

"But I'm going to let you go. However, I suggest that, rather than relying on the old fashioned method, you do as Eric and I did, and freeze his sperm."

"Ohhh, is that how you did it?" She jumped up. "Oh my god, that's so smart!"

"Sookie, I can't stand you. You are irritating, you tried to hurt me while I was human, and you're generally a bitch. I suggest that you and Bill go get your shit done and leave me alone from here on out. Like... forever."

"Oh, right. Right."

"Except for when he comes to me to be glamored so he can't remember who gave him the potion, why, or how."

"But-"

"He'll remember the rest. Just not that part."

"Okay," Sookie said, and left with Bill, who was still trying to find a way to hear his own heartbeat, apparently.

Rhiannon turned and looked at Stephanie. "You're going to have to decide whether to be glamored again, or to keep secrets. If you are going to be part of our family, it's time that you knew everything and made your choice. You have to decide where you stand, once and for all."

She gulped. "It's so dangerous. It seems like I'm always in trouble around you guys-" A sob cut her off. "But I can't live without them. I love them like they were my own."

"They are druids, Stephanie, and you're a Christian. They're supernatural beings. Healers, magicians."

Stephanie took a deep breath. "They're people, and God loves them. So do I. I'm sorry I helped Mabel. I missed them so much that I couldn't bear it."

Rhiannon untied her and Eric threw her over his shoulder. They flitted back to the estate.

The children were retrieved and they spent the day in Shreveport at Eric's old apartment, restored and decorated to Rhiannon's specifications. The cleanup took some time, but at last the estate was ready again.

Two months later found Andrew and Stephanie back together and Stephanie pregnant, to everyone's surprise.

Things got back to what was normal for their strange family. A note came in the mail some six months later that Sookie and Bill were expecting their first child as well. And the general state of constant catastophe in the area died down to a dull roar.

Life was, at last, moderately peaceful. As peaceful as life can be with three children, two vampires, and a druid and his wife...


	24. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

"Mom!"

Rhiannon whirled to see Godric coming toward her. Tall and blond like his father, he was surprisingly dark-skinned. "Yes dear?" she asked him.

"Nancy loves this so much. It's exactly what she wanted. Thank you so much. She was so worried it wouldn't turn out since it's night and inside."

They turned and looked at the wedding area. Rhiannon had done the entire thing in white and ice blue, as Nancy wanted. In the back room was even an ice rink, created with Lief's druid magic. It was separated from the main area by glass, so that those in the relative comfort of the wedding area were not impacted by the extreme cold required to maintain it.

"I do think she's a little crazy to have him make it snow on her," Rhiannon told him. "And rigging it so that it looked like it was created by theatrics was even harder than the ice rink."

He sighed. "She thinks it'll be beautiful and epic," he told her.

"More like 'frigid'," Rhiannon retorted.

"Come on, Mom, don't let her hear you say that."

Eric walked up behind Rhiannon, wrapping his arms around her waist. "What's going on?" he asked.

"The bride wants snow on her head, so snow on her head, she will get," Rhiannon answered, leaning back against him.

"And I thought Pam was girlie," Eric said, his voice laced with his very male opinion of snowing on the bride in July.

"At least I talked her out of it snowing on everyone," Rhiannon answered.

"It will be the first time that Tatiana has seen snow," said a voice behind them. Rhiannon looked over at Stephanie.

"Are you pregnant again?" she asked, her eyebrows shooting to her hairline.

"Yes," the other woman said, her hand going to her slightly protruding abdomen.

"That's eight?" Rhiannon asked.

"Nine," Stephanie replied.

They'd learned that indeed, Andrew did 'breed true' as it were. All of their children were druids.

They offered congratulations again, and Rhiannon was pleased. The more druids the world had, the better it was for everyone. Someday, like the vampires, they could come out of hiding. But not today.

Several hours later, after the ceremony, during the reception dinner, Stephanie came up to her.

"Rhiannon, may I have a word, please?"

"Of course," Rhiannon answered. She'd never trusted the other woman with her children, as she had promised, but she also hadn't held anger toward her.

"I just wanted to tell you something that I've meant to say for the longest time and I never did. I'm sorry that I let Lief call me 'mommy', even for the short time that I did. I didn't really understand how much that must have hurt you until I had Alexander. I did terrible things and you forgave me for their sake... but I let him call me the name that was exclusively yours. I hope that someday, you can forgive me for those terrible things. I'm so proud today, watching Godric get married. It also reminded me, though, how much I owe to you. Everything I have. My life, my children, my relationship with your family." She wiped tears out of her eyes and sniffled.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Hormones. Anyway. Thank you, and I'm truly sorry for the hurts that I caused you and your family. I didn't really understand before how very much I hurt you. Now that I do... I... it's hard to forgive myself. Sometimes I cry at night about it."

Rhiannon wrapped her arm around her. "I forgave you years ago, Stephanie. Now it's your turn to forgive yourself for your children's sake."

Rhiannon danced with Godric. She danced with Lief. She chatted with her lovely daughter.

As the night grew old, and the humans began to give up and go home, she finally got to spend time with Eric. They sat on the top of the castle together, watching the few people who sat or walked in their garden.

"Do you miss him still?" Eric asked suddenly.

"Miss who, love?" she asked, surprised by the wistful sound in his voice.

He laid down and put his head in her lap. She brushed his hair off of his forehead.

"Keklewei."

"He's been gone a very long time."

"You cried over him, though. Do you miss him?"

"Honey, I haven't even thought about him for years. I'll always have love for him, but I'm here with you, now, and that's where I want to be."

He sat up and kissed her fiercely. "I love you."

She touched his cheek gently, with all the love she felt for him. "I love you, Eric Northman."

Just before morning came, Eric asked her, "How did you kill all of those vampires?"

She chuckled. "I'm impressed, sir. You waited so very, very long to ask that."

He lifted his eyebrow. "Well, reward me, then."

She grinned. "I don't have enough time to reward you, dear..."

He laughed. "You can reward me that way later. Reward me with an answer for now."

"They knew I was powerful," she began, "so they created a sort of silver beaded net that would cover the area they were meeting in. They had humans controlling the release cords so that they didn't have to do it themselves. Blind and deaf humans, so they couldn't be glamored. I simply removed the humans—I rounded them up and put them outside of the silver netting. The vampires tried to find a way to subdue me and force me to release the netting. Instead, I just burrowed a few seconds before the sun came up. They perished in their own trap. Most couldn't burrow fast enough to escape it. When I rose the next night, I killed off the few who had."

He shuddered. "You didn't really kill them. They brought it on themselves."

She sighed and shrugged. "It's no different, really. Especially when it comes to legends and their use in protecting me—and now our children."

He kissed her, and they fell asleep in each others' arms, warm with the promise of a long future together.


End file.
